1.  *  Close your eyes and plug your ears completely for 20 seconds.
What could you write about if that was your whole life?

2.  Introduce Helen Keller and tell about her life writing and lecturing.
"What could she have been telling people in her speeches and essays?"

3.   Discuss goal of an essay describing some personal experience, but also trying to get a message to the read that is presents information, is valuable, and is "arguable" (thus even a personal essay has a thesis statement of a sort)
(5 minutes)

4.   Oral reading of Keller's essay, "Three Days to See" 
(25 minutes)

5.   Teacher shows photos of his last three days.
City of toronto downtown;    Woods outside of Oka alone;   Walk with Julian and Isabelle.
(10 minutes)

6.  Class begins writing a personal essay describing their last three days of sight, and what they would look at.
(Emphasize verb tense agreement as being "I would" in phrases such as "If I were to go blind in three days, I would gaze upon my beautiful child.")