Classroom Activities
To begin the unit, I will introduce students to the steps of the writing process with writer’s workshop. I will model the steps using my own personal narrative, using the title “The Blizzard Known as Jonas”. It will tell about the day everything seemed to go wrong for me when we had the snow storm Jonas a few years ago. Then, we will read the text Alexander and use brainstorming activities and graphic organizers so that students can begin the prewriting step of the process. We will go through the book and highlight different events and Alexander’s emotions and feelings, students will turn and talk with a partner and then share again their findings with the class. I will also allow them to draw out any scenes they want to emphasize; they love drawing! We will focus on making connections (text to world), comparing and contrasting what distinguishes the book from their own personal story using graphic organizers like Venn Diagrams. Additional activities that could be included in this unit are artistic efforts through creating storyboards. When launching the workshop, starting out with the mini lessons “You might start by sharing two or three personal stories from your own life. Keep your stories short. Usually one of your examples will spark ideas for your students to write about. Choose stories with emotional content-strange, sad, funny.”22
Writer’s Workshop should have the following three components:
- Mini Lesson (10-15 minutes): a whole class lesson about a writing strategy, craft, technique, or language convention. In many classrooms, the teacher has students gathered in the meeting area.
- Independent Writing (25-30 minutes): students work on their writing back at their seats. The teacher walks around the room and also has several writing conferences with students, which usually last 4-7 minutes each.
- Share Session (5-10 minutes): The class reconvenes to discuss how writing went that day, either to highlight student work or to give feedback to a few students about their draft-in process.23
The Writing Process
- Pre-writing: students plan for their writing through reading sources, brainstorming, talking, or sketching.
- Drafting: Students write independently on a topic of their choice on an assigned piece.
- Revising: Students reread what they have already written and make appropriate changes to the content.
- Editing: Students go back through their writing to fix and circle their use of proper conventions, mechanics, and spelling.
- Publishing: Students formally present chosen pieces of writing in a finished format.24
In each lesson after the read aloud, it is important to tell students to practice that skill in their writing for the day. For example, if the lesson is on using dialogue they should practice using dialogue in their independent writing time. For example:
Day 1- Owen mini lesson (which is about using dialogue in writing), Students will go practice dialogue in their journals writing an entry that includes characters speaking, using quotation marks.
Day 2- Students will apply yesterday’s lesson to their personal narrative.
Week 1- Duration: 5 days (The teacher will not conduct conferences in week one, but rotate around to check on writers, help with goal setting, making students feel like they can write.)
Strategies for Independent Writing time: Free-write and Journaling
Lessons 1-2: What Should I Write About?: finding a topic and zooming in on that topic.
Lesson 1: Ralph Tells a Story by: Abby Hanlon- students will learn about finding writing ideas.
Lesson 2: Kitchen Dance by: Maurie J. Manning- students will learn how to zoom in and write about the small moments in their family lives.
The teacher and students will create a class anchor chart on why writers write together to display in class. Students will be able to refer back to it later. The teacher will brainstorm a list of possible writing topics with students to be added to a class-sized heart map. The students will also add the topics to a list in their writing folders or journals.
Week 2- Duration: 5 days *This week the teacher will begin conducting writing conferences*
Strategies for Independent Writing time: Journaling, Pre-writing, Oral Story-Telling
Lessons 3-5: Writing about Yourself: Personal Narratives
Lesson 3: When the Relatives Came by: Cynthia Rylant- students will learn to spark memories of family visits and trips which are good inspiration for narrative writing.
Lesson 4: A Chair for My Mother by: Vera Williams- students will learn about the details of personal narratives.
The teacher and students will create a class anchor chart on the characteristics of personal narratives that includes:
- focuses on a particular incident in the author’s’ life
- has specific details about a time, place, and people involved
- includes dialogue
- includes the author’s thoughts and feelings as well as actual events
- may be a few paragraphs or several pages in length
The teacher will use graphic organizers with students to guide them through the text identifying places where the characteristics of personal narratives appear in the texts.
Lesson 5: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by: Judith Viorst- students will learn about the details of personal narratives.
The students will begin their pre-writing step of the writing process.
Week 3- Duration: 5 days
Strategies for Independent Writing time: Drafting, Journaling, Shared Stories
Lessons 6-8: Writing about Yourself: Personal Narratives-The BIG IDEA (public point)
Lesson 6: Punctuation Takes a Vacation by: Robin Pulver- for learning how important punctuation is to a sentence and a paragraph.
Lesson 7: Fireflies by: Julie Brinckloe- students will learn first person narrative, as well as writing descriptive sentences.
Lesson 8: Owl Moon by: Jane Yolen- students will learn about personal narrative and descriptive details.
The teacher will explain and model how to find the big idea of the text. The teacher and students will create a class anchor chart on how to identify the big idea of a text as a reader, and how to make the big idea clear as a writer together to display in class. Students will be able to refer back to it later. Then the students will work with a partner and choose a pre-selected leveled text and practice identifying the big idea. They will record their findings in their writing journal and in a graphic organizer.
Week 4- Duration: 5 days
Strategies for Independent Writing time: Drafting, Re-Reading, Revising, Free-Write
Lessons 9-10: Choosing Just Right Words
Lesson 9: Rollercoaster by: Marla Frazee- students will learn about word choice, small moment writing and text/writing features that students love to emulate–using dashes to stretch out words, using CAPITAL letters to place emphasis on words, and using sound words.
Lesson 10: Thundercake by: Patricia Pollacco- for modeling interesting openings, setting a scene, strong verbs, punctuation and the style of a recipe at the end of the story.
The teacher will create an anchor chart with the students listing words from the text as well as new words students may formulate. We will also use reference materials such as a dictionary and thesaurus to find more words. Students will then go to their journals and write a paragraph or 5-7 sentences using a few of the words. We will focus on using descriptive words in our sentences highlighting feelings, setting, and mood using descriptive words to say so. For example instead of saying “The boy felt nervous” we could say “His face turned pale and his cheeks were red.”
Week 5- Duration: 5 days
Strategies for Independent Writing time: Revising, Editing, Peer Interviews
Lessons 11-12: Dialogue and Point of View
Lesson 11: Owen by: Kevin Henkes- students will learn about dialogue.
Lesson 12: Let’s Get a Pup! Said Kate By: Bob Graham- students will learn about dialogue.
The teacher and students will create a class anchor chart on dialogue together to display in class. Students will be able to refer back to it later. Students should understand that dialogue is a conversation that happens between two or more characters, and that all words spoken by a character must be surrounded by quotation marks. The teacher will model a short comic strip panel where she will create dialogue between two or more characters. The students will then create their own comic strip panel, practicing this same skill. Another activity would be for students to find examples of dialogue in a text and highlight them throughout.
Lessons 13-14: Who’s Speaking?: Teaching Point of View
Lesson 13: Memoirs of a Goldfish by: Devin Scillian- students will learn about identifying point of view.
Lesson 14: The Day the Crayons Quit by: Drew Daywalt- students will learn how to compare and contrast point of view in a text.
The teacher and students will create a class anchor chart on point of view together to display in class. Students will be able to refer back to it later. The teacher will use graphic organizers with students to guide them through the text identifying places where first and second person point of view is used. The students will later use their journals to create a paragraph where they will practice point of view by creating a point of view poem, using the word I.
Week 6- Duration: 5 days
Publishing and Sharing
Students will complete the final step of the writing process which is publishing. They will be able to sign up for a day to read their published personal narratives to the class.
Strategies: Author’s Chair
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