Introduction

Every year teachers are tasked with making sure that their students learn to write a narrative.  This past year I taught my students step by step how to write a narrative.  We first wrote a watermelon story.  A watermelon story tells your readers about what you did that day, what you ate, played, watched, and then when you finally went to bed.  We then narrowed it down to a watermelon slice story. A slice story for example tells readers what you did that morning only.  Lastly, we wrote a seed story.  This is where the student is specific about a particular moment of what happened in the morning.  For example it could be a story about putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush and squirting it on the cat.  This process was done for the first trimester and the final writing project was to write a narrative that only took up a moment of their day with a beginning, middle, and end: essentially a seed story.  At the end of the unit my students had created small moment narratives.  While this goal was accomplished, I felt that not only could I have done more for my students, but my students were capable of producing more.

It was during this time that I was encouraged to apply for the Yale National Initiative, I read that one of the seminars was Reading for Writing and I was so intrigued with the idea of learning to write a narrative through reading that I begin to research to find out what the data said about this approach.

Rationale

Every year I look at an area of my teaching that I would like to improve and as I reflected I realized lately that I have not improved my writing instruction.  Although my students have done well as they moved on to 2^nd grade I felt as though I could do more.  I began my research by looking at the writing statistics for the whole country and what I found was confirmation that I did indeed need to do more for my students.

The National Assessment for Educational Progress results for the year 2011, the assessment showed that only 28% of 4^th grade students were proficient in writing.¹

With this statistic in mind my concern for my own students rose; was the writing instruction in my class sufficient?  How could I improve the writing instruction for my students so that as they matriculated they would have a solid foundational knowledge and ability to write?

Many studies have shown the importance of children having solid foundational learning skills starting in preschool.  Children who start elementary with school readiness skills have a more positive learning trajectory.  When a child has solid foundational skills it is the base on which more academic knowledge is built and it is through this lens that we begin to see how necessary it is to prepare our students early.  Another finding that has been consistent is that foundational writing skills positively affect both mathematics and reading performance in 3^rd-grade assessments; this holds true for both low-income and ethnically diverse children.² 

After looking at different methods for teaching writing, it resonated with me that it would be best to teach writing in concert with reading as they go hand in hand.  I had been teaching writing separately and realized that I was missing a huge opportunity.  Teaching writing through reading enables me to teach two major foundational skills at the same time.  I will use mentor texts to teach writing and focus on “narrative” first.  The common core standard for 1^st grade writing a narrative expects the student to “Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.”

I also think that when it comes to writing children are naturally drawn to the personal narrative.  They love telling everyone about what happened to them over the summer, in the cafeteria, on the playground, and at a birthday party etc. By teaching the craft of writing personal experiences at the beginning of the school year we are giving our students the tools to make sure that they are able to capture moments of their life while building a firm foundation for future writing.

Demographics

Emeryville, CA is a small city that is located between Oakland and Berkeley CA.  Emeryville is just over one square mile and was once an industrial town.  As times changed so has the city.  Emeryville is now home to Pixar, Novartis, Ikea, as well as many housing developments.  Emeryville has also had an independent school district, although many of the residents do not have children.  The school district has two schools:

Anna Yates TK-8 and Emery Secondary School 9-12.

Emery Unified School District is a very diverse District.  The student population is 51% Black, 21% Latino, 14% White, 12% Asian, 2% Two or more races, Pacific Island, and Native.  Our English language learners make up 25.4% of the population.  We are a Title 1 school with 76.9% of our students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.³

Content

Narrative as a genre

I believe that in order to teach something well I need to have the experience first.  The seminar Reading for Writing: Modeling the Modern Essay with Jessica Brantley as the seminar leader has done that for me. 

One of the conversations held in my seminar revolved around “Well, what is a Narrative?”  Before tackling that question I would like to first define what genre is.  The Norton Reader defines genre as a term that is used by teachers who teach composition and/or literature, that genre refers to certain types of writing that have common features, are similar in style, how it is presented, and what the subject is.

When teaching genre the word conventions go with it.  You can’t have one without the other so an understanding of what conventions are is necessary.  Conventions are the guidelines or what is usually done like saying good morning when walking into work, all of the parts, all of the elements needed to distinguish one genre from another.

Norton gives four examples of literary genres: Narrative genres, Descriptive genres, Analytic genres, and Argumentative genres.  For the purpose of this study unit we will look closely at the genre of Narrative.  Narrative genres tell us stories.  These stories include personal essays, memoirs, graphic memoirs, and literacy narratives.⁴ To understand what narratives are we will dive deeper into two types of narrative, personal narrative and memoir.

Personal Narrative

In our seminar we pondered what makes a style of writing a personal narrative or a personal essay.  There were many ideas thrown into the ring.  We discussed the idea that a personal narrative is a snapshot of a life or memory and that the words narrative and essay are used interchangeably.  We hypothesized that a personal narrative should have aspects of story telling along with characters and setting.  We talked about the essay/narrative being a crafted piece of writing.  A personal narrative is a first person true story that is usually found in magazines and newspapers.  These are nonfiction stories, with the purpose of storytelling while having a public point. A nonfiction narrative has a mini- plot line that guides the reader to a conclusion or realization.⁵  A personal narrative has topics that range from canoeing, friendship, death, birth, travel, satire, and humor.  It can cover a person’s personal growth or downfall, racism, and the wonders of sitting on the beach.  This type of nonfiction narrative is also sometimes called creative nonfiction. (Harris)

One of the key components in a personal nonfiction narrative is a climatic event in the telling of the story.  In the essay Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self, by Alice Walker the climatic event that changed how she viewed herself happened very quickly.  She starts the section in which she tells the story with “It was great fun being cute. But then, one day, it ended.”  She then tells us what lead up to the event that changed not only her appearance but also how she saw herself.

“One day while I am standing on top of our makeshift “garage” pieces of tin nailed across some poles-holding my bow and arrow and looking out toward the fields, I feel and incredible blow in my right eye.  I look down just in time to see my brother lower his gun.  Both brothers rush to my side.  My eye stings, and I cover it with my hand. “If you tell” they say “ we will get a whipping.  You don’t want that to happen, do you?” I do not. (Norton p.23) 

Because of this decision Ms. Walker’s eye is permanently damaged and she becomes blind in that eye.  This accident changes how Alice Walker began to see herself.  She thought herself to be cute, smart, and fearless, but the BB pellet that hit her in the eye not only blinded her but it left a very noticeable white blob of scar. And because of this scar a young Alice Walker felt at the age of eight that the scar was the only thing that people could see, and for six years she no longer felt pretty, smart, or fearless.

The narrative also uses great descriptive language with the author reflecting and interpreting their experience. This can be seen in Zora Neal Hurston’s essay How It Feels To Be Colored Me;

“Music. The great blobs of purple and red emotion have not touched him. He has only heard what I felt. He is far away and I see him but dimly across the ocean and the continent that have fallen between us.  He is so pale with his whiteness then and I am so colored.” (Norton)

In Joey Franklin’s essay Working at Wendy’s show that the descriptive language does not have to be very long to evoke your own imagination and memories.  Franklin writes,

“It’s 8:45 p.m., and I am standing in front of the counter at Wendy’s.  It smells of French fries and mop water.”  With these two sentences I remember being at Wendy’s and smelling the opposing odors.  Loving the French fry smell and not liking the mop water smell.

Another key component of writing a personal nonfiction narrative is what the public point or purpose of the essay is. You don’t explicitly state the idea at the end of your essay but you should allude to your point.  In Brent Staples Black Men and Public Space he ends the essay with,

“An on late-evening constitutionals I employ what has proved to be an excellent tension-reducing measure:  I whistle melodies from Beethoven and Vivaldi and the more popular classical composers.  Even steely New Yorkers hunching toward nighttime destinations seem to relax, and occasionally they even join in the tune.  Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn’t be warbling bright, sunny selections from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.  It is my equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when they know they are in bear country.”

With this closing the author is commenting on our society that views black men as people we should be afraid of.  This is a stereotype that has been perpetuated since slavery times.  To counteract that narrative that many people believe the Brent Staples whistles classical music to keep him safe from a frighten society as well as to calm those who  as a black man who has to contend with the stigma of white people always thinking that every black man they encounter in the nighttime is a mugger or criminal.  It also speaks to the extremes black men have to take to be seen as innocent first in a country that only sees them a guilty.

Another example of ending a personal experience narrative that is not explicit in it’s ending is Joan Didion’s On Going Home;

“It is time for the baby’s birthday party: a white cake, strawberry-marshmallow ice cream, a bottle of champagne saved from another party.  In the evening, after she has gone to sleep, I kneel beside the crib and touch her face, where it is pressed against the slats, with mine.  She is an open and trusting child, unprepared for the unaccustomed to the ambushes of family life, and perhaps it is just as well that I can offer her little of that life.  I would like to give her more.  I would like to promise her that she will grow up with a sense of her cousins and of rivers and of her great-grandmother’s teacups, would like to pledge her a picnic on a river with fried chicken and her hair uncombed, would like to give her home for her birthday, but we live differently now and I can promise her nothing like that.  I give her a xylophone and a sundress from Madeira, and promise to tell her a funny story.” (Norton p.3)

With how Didion chose to end this essay, we can draw a couple of conclusions from the ending.  We can pull out that she feels bad that she can’t give the same type of childhood to her child that she had, one filled with the sense of a large family both the messy and loving parts.  She wishes she could give her child a foundation based in their family history.  But as times have changed the author recognizes that she will be unable to provide that type of life for her daughter. So she will compensate that loss with small items that remind her of the past along with some stories to make her child laugh.

Memoir

William Zinsser in the book On Writing Well points out that students today rarely write about the subject they know most about, themselves.  They are relegated to write what the teacher tells them to.  This inability to write about oneself continues on into adulthood, when aspiring writers write what the editors want.  Amazingly this thought pattern plagues our elders where many say one day I will, because they are still under the illusion that they need “permission” masked under fear or thought of inability. 

In the seminar we talked about what the word memoir means, a couple of definitions were brought to the forefront, the first was that memoir is a memory and the second definition expanded that to be a collection of memories.  When it comes to writing a memoir your memory is what is most important. The Norton Reader describes memoirs as “first person accounts of important events or people from an author’s life.”  Matilda Butler states,

A memoir really is an opportunity to reflect -- to look inside yourself and to say, "It’s not just all these external things that have happened to me. It’s really, how has something changed me? Why am I the person I am today? What were the big turning points in my life? What has caused me to have the outlook I have?"

Warner explains that a memoir is a slice of a persons’ life and not an autobiography.  I would call it a snapshot of memories.  In the seminar it was described as a written photo with a message for the reader.  Zinsser likens a memoir to looking through a window into a persons’ life.  When writing about your life in a memoir Zinsser reminds us that all components should be moving the piece forward, this includes “all the details-people, places, events, anecdotes, ideas, emotions-are moving your story steadily along.”  He tells us that the best stories have more of an impact when focused not on you but on your actions and how those actions affected you and help you become who you are.

One example of a memoir comes from the essay Under the Influence by Scott Russell Sanders.

“I am moved to write these pages now because my own son, at the age of ten, is taking on himself the grief of the world, and in particular the griefs of his father.  He tells me that when I am gripped by sadness he feel responsible; he feels there must be something he can do to spring me from depression, to fix my life.  And that crushing sense of responsibility is exactly what I felt at the age of ten in the face of my father’s drinking.  My son wonders if I, too, am possessed.  I write, therefore, to drag into the light what eats at me-the fear, the guilt, the shame-so that my own children may be spared.”

This is a great example of how a memoir pinpoints a moment and/or experience in your life. The passage reflects on the writers present and how it reminds him of the past, but with next steps that he can take to change the present for the better.

Another example of a memoir is Henry Louis Gates Jr. In the Kitchen;

“The “hot comb” was a fine-tooth iron instrument with a long wooden handle and a pair of iron curlers that opened and closed like scissors.  Mama would put it in the gas fire until it glowed.  You could smell those prongs heating up.  I liked that smell.  Not the smell so much, I guess, as what the smell meant for the shape of my day.  There was an intimate warmth in the women’s tones as they talked with my Mama, doing their hair.  I knew what the women had been through to get their hair ready to be “done,” because I would watch Mama do it to herself.  How that kink could be transformed through grease and fire into that magnificent head of wavy hair was a miracle to me and still is.” (Norton p.135)

Gates has included sights, smells, and sounds in this slice small slice of his life.  It is a culmination of many days that were very similar and how that experience left a deep impression on his life.  This short passage flooded me with memories of my grandmother and mother pressing my sister and my hair.  We would be getting our hair done for church or a holiday event or  with many of the black forth my memories of a different mother, kitchen, and kid but the conversations between the women in my kitchen, the smell of the hot comb heating up as well as my hair getting press, and feeling of how hot my hair was after the comb was run through stays with me also.

Good Writing

During the seminar we tackled the question: what is “Good Writing?  This stemmed from the fact that we were reading many different types of narratives, including the ones that we each wrote.  This can be a difficult question to answer when looking at the surface because people like reading different things.  But the foundation of writing is the same.  Melissa Donovan condensed good writing into Eight Characteristics of Good Writing.

• Clarity and focus- Ideas should be clear and plainly understood, readers are not should not be getting lost in the reading and having to reread. Throughout the paper the focus stays the same i.e.: the plot doesn’t change in the middle of the narrative.
• Organization- Sentences should flow. Is there a rhythm to the writing?
• Ideas and themes- Readers should be able to infer what the main idea or theme of the narrative is.
• Voice- Does the work sound like you, and not another writer?
• Language (word choice)- Use words simply to get your idea across, craft your sentences.
• Grammar and style- Follow grammar rules. Style is uniquely you and cannot be forced, but comes in time.
• Credibility or believability- Check facts
• Thought-provoking or emotionally inspiring- Readers should reflect upon what they have read. Does it make them question, make them change their mind, does your writing give them new ideas?

The Norton Reader also has eight strategies that will help you produce good writing and there are similarities between the two lists.

• Generate ideas- Brainstorm, free write, and research
• Develop a main point or thesis- Can be stated or implied
• Gather evidence- Evidence used is dependent upon the type of writing.
• Organize your ideas- Start with introduction, body, and end with a natural conclusion.
• Write multiple drafts- Write in short periods of time over several days.
• Acknowledge the words and ideas of other- Cite all sources.
• Get responses and revise- Ask family, friends, classmates, and editors to look over to find areas that can be improved.
• Edit, proofread, and format the final draft

Teaching Strategies

There are six main components to teaching this unit.  Mentor texts, close reads, turn and talk, student- teacher conference, and anchor charts.  These strategies will be used through out the unit, which last 9 weeks. This is a unit on 1^st grade narrative writing.

Mentor Texts

Mentor texts are books that will be mentors to teach students how to write.  These texts are the examples that students look at to see how to do something they have never done before.  For this unit we will be looking at personal experience text.  Jen Vincent describes mentor texts as; “Mentor texts or anchor texts are any text that can be used as an example of good writing for writers.  Writers use a mentor text to inform their own writing.” Catherine Reed who is a 1^st grade teacher states “ Mentor texts offer students a ‘real’ perspective on a genre and give students a ‘real’ author to model.” 

Research has shown that reading and writing should not be taught in isolation but unfortunately many of the reading and writing curriculums has teachers doing exactly that.  Many of us teach reading blocks or workshops and a separate writer’s workshop.  There is no true integration with each other. Hodges and Matthews found that using mentor texts, more specifically nonfiction text, helps improve not only in reading but writing also.  They found that the students also were more confident and able to analyze text in both reading and writing.

Close Reads

When using mentor texts teachers should also employ the use of close reading.  Lester Laminack found;

“that returning as a reader to a text (or a small set of texts) again and again over time leads to deeper and deeper in- sights about the nuances of why the writer made particular choices. Learning to think about a text through the lens of how the writer’s choices (e.g., craft moves, text structures, language, vocabulary) influence your construction of meaning leads a student writer to insights about why the writer made each choice. Yes, we all love a good booklist, but the true work of mentoring comes from the relationship the reader-writer develops with a particular text. Without that relationship, the deep insight about the nuances in the writing and trust in the writer, the text is just a set of moves to mimic in an effort to please a teacher.”

Close reading is a teaching strategy where students are able to dive deeply into a book and study the text structures, details, tone, organization, vocabulary, and other themes of the text, through repeated readings.⁶

The four books that will be used for this unit are: Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson  by Jane Yolen, Mango Moon by Diane de Anda, and Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall.  Each Kindness is a personal narrative of a little girl named Chole. When a new girl named Maya comes to class and tries to befriend Chole and the other girls in the class she is repeatedly rejected.  When Chole is unable to participate in a class project about kindness, she decides to become friends with Maya only to discover that is not as easy as she thought it would be.  The second book is Owl Moon is also written as a personal experience from a child’s perspective.  A little girl and her father go out “owling” the story is about the companionship they share as they look for owls.  The third book is Mango Moon and tells of a young girls life after her father is deported.  The fourth book is Jabari Jumps this story tells of the day Jabari jumps off the diving board.

The books that I’ve chosen are very diverse in both characters as well as how the personal narratives are written and the themes.  Each Kindness explores what it really means to be kind and how it feels when you lose that opportunity to show kindness.  The main character of the book is an African American girl.  Owl Moon is very poetic and is told from the eyes of a little white girl. Mango Moon is about how a young Latina girl’s life in unhinged due to the deportation of her father.  Jabari Jumps is written from a boy’s view and he is African American.  It is very important that I use books that represent as many cultures so that my students can see themselves in what we are reading as the texts are the base of their writing.

Turn and Talk

This is teaching strategy is also known as interactive talk and it allows students to develop their oral language, conversational skill, increase vocabulary, listening skills, and deepen the understanding of the text before they begin writing.  Students are able to share their thoughts without the risk of feeling they will get the answer wrong in front of the teacher and whole class.  It is at this time that teacher can also listen to see if there are any misconceptions and will be able to address them quickly.  Turning and talking to a partner allows the students to process the information while keeping them engaged and breaking up the learning.

Student-Teacher Conferencing

This teaching strategy focuses more on the writing.  Student-teacher writing conferencing allows the students to have one on one time with the teacher focusing on what the student wrote.  It is during this conference that teachers must be careful in how they approach the writing of the student.  It has been shown that students respond better to the conference when it is student led and the teacher is an active listener or audience to the student’s writing.⁷

Donald Gloves gives us 6 guideline to have a successful conference:

• There should be a predictable structure
• The teacher should only focus on a few points
• The teacher should have solutions to students' problems
• Allow the student to be the teacher
• Use appropriate and related vocabulary
• Promote the pleasure of writing.

Anchor Charts

With the common core standards requiring that 1^st graders read and understand complex text as well as being able to write narratives, opinion, and informational text it can be difficult for them to remember everything being taught.  Anchor charts are wonderful resources that students can use to help them remember different concepts through out the year.

Using anchor charts has been a teaching strategy for a few years.  Victoria Oglan states:

“These charts help students learn and represent key ideas, vocabulary, concepts, and other important information being studied; they also help students see the connections between reading and writing. Anchor charts are thinking charts that demonstrate proficient reading and writing; they are mental pictures, constituting visual representations of learning. Linder helps teachers use anchor charts in intentional ways to address the increasing reading and writing demands of the CCSS (Oglan, 2015).

Anchor charts can also be created with the whole class so that the students have a sense of ownership of the information on the chart.  Because they were part of making the charts they refer to them often.

Bacchioni and Kurstedt list why anchor charts are needed;

• Anchor charts help to build a community as students work together to create them.
• Anchor charts make thinking visible
• Anchor charts have relevant and current learning accessible
• Anchor charts are documents of instruction
• Anchor charts are scaffold for the visual and English learners
• Anchor charts support students independence because when they need help they look to the charts

https://pin.it/y3xpt2vzwvru5g

https://www.smore.com/6fwtw-pleasant-street-school-news

https://www.mrsrichardsonsclass.com/9-must-make-anchor-charts-for-writing/

Reading Activities

Reading the book should take one week reading every day.  During the second and third week you will work with the students as they write their narrative.  This schedule should be followed for each of the books.

Each Kindness

Day 1

Read Each Kindness (cold read; whole class)

Tell the students what specific part you liked best about the story and why

Have students turn and talk, asking each other what did they like best about the story and why (switch partners after 1 minute).  Call on 2 to 3 students to tell the class what their favorite part of the story was and why.

Day 2

Read Each Kindness (vocabulary and character)

Write the vocabulary words on an anchor chart and discuss what they mean before reading the book, it would be best to have pictures for a visual; settled, ragged, tattered, thawed, rippled.

Talk about Maya and Chole’s character traits the girls show when they first met, what words were used to describe each person.  Make an anchor chart

Have students turn and talk have one student talk about Maya and the other student talk about Chole, explaining to each what words or phrases in the book help them to determine the character traits of each girl.  Have 2 students talk to the class what character traits Maya and Chole exhibited.

Day 3

Read Each Kindness (vocabulary, feelings of characters)

Review the vocabulary words

Discuss how the character’s feel and what words or phrases were used that showed their feelings.  Have students turn and talk about how they would treat someone new who came into their class.  Call on 2 or 3 students to tell the class what they would when someone new came to the class.

Day 4

Show a quick video about the author: https://youtu.be/0J_mNZVoeMM (stop at 0:46).

Show video of the author reading the book:  https://youtu.be/kj7Oc0ZoOjM

Talk to the students about what does it mean to be an author and explain that they will be authors because next week they will be writing their own story.

Have students turn and talk telling each other about one of their favorite books.

Day 5

Call students up review the vocabulary.  Call students up one at a time to retell the story page by page.  Give each student a pebble and have them tell how they have shown kindness to others and drop it in a pail to see the ripples.

Owl Moon

Day 1

Read Owl Moon (cold read; whole class)

Tell the students what specific part you liked best about the story and why

Have students turn and talk, asking each other what did they like best about the story and why (switch partners after 1 minute).  Call on 2 to 3 students to tell the class what their favorite part of the story was and why.

Day 2

Read Owl Moon (vocabulary and tone)

Write the vocabulary words on an anchor chart and discuss what they mean before reading the book; it would be best to have pictures for a visual.

Vocabulary:  owling, woolen, shrugged, disappointed, clearing, pumped

Discuss what tone is, make an anchor chart then have students figure out the tone of the narrative and what words or phrases express it.  Have students turn and talk about the tone of the narrative and how they know the tone. Call 2 or 3 students to tell class what they talked about with their partner.

Day 3

Read Owl Moon (vocabulary and character)

Review the vocabulary words

Discuss how the character’s feel and what words or phrases were used that showed their feelings.  Have students turn and talk about a time they went on a special trip with someone.

Day 4

Show a quick video about the author: https://youtu.be/kj7Oc0ZoOjM (stop at 1:11)

Show a video with the author reading the book: https://youtu.be/FYSgG2cK4ng

Compare and contrast Each Kindness and Owl Moon, make an anchor chart

Day 5

Have students retell the story page by page.

Show a video of a Horned owl: https://youtu.be/bt3X8MJgJWo

Mango Moon

Day 1

Read Mango Moon (cold read; whole class)

Tell the students what specific part you liked best about the story and why

Have students turn and talk, asking each other what did they like best about the story and why (switch partners after 1 minute).  Call on 2 to 3 students to tell the class what their favorite part of the story was and why.

Day 2

Read Mango Moon (vocabulary and character)

Write the vocabulary words on an anchor chart and discuss what they mean before reading the book; it would be best to have pictures for a visual.

Vocabulary:  papi, tios, piñata, jewelry

Discuss how the character’s feel and what words or phrases were used that showed their feelings.  Have students turn and talk about how they would feel if a loved one had to go away and why.

Day 3

Read Mango Moon (vocabulary and tone)

Review the vocabulary

Discuss what tone is, review anchor chart then have students figure out the tone of the narrative and what words or phrases express it.  Have students turn and talk about the tone of the narrative and how they know the tone. Call 2 or 3 students to tell class what they talked about with their partner.

Day 4

Meet the author: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/social-welfare-professor-emerita-also-award-winning-children-s-book-author

Have students retell the story page by page

Day 5

Read Mango Moon

Look up orange sunsets on google.com and bring mangos, have students compare sunsets and mangos.

Discuss metaphors with students and where they are found in the narrative.  Have students turn and talk about the metaphors found in the story.

Eat the mangos with students

Jabari Jumps

Day 1

Read Jabari Jumps (cold read; whole class)

Tell the students what specific part you liked best about the story and why

Have students turn and talk, asking each other what did they like best about the story and why (switch partners after 1 minute).  Call on 2 to 3 students to tell the class what their favorite part of the story was and why.

Day 2

Read Jabari Jumps (vocabulary, character, and feelings)

Vocabulary: diving, curling, rough, sprang

Discuss how the character’s feel and what words or phrases were used that showed their feelings. Have students turn and talk about how they overcame fear.  Call upon 2 to 3 students to share with the class.

Day 3

Read Jabari Jumps (vocabulary and tone)

Discuss what tone is, review anchor chart then have students figure out the tone of the narrative and what words or phrases express it.  Have students turn and talk about the tone of the narrative and how they know the tone. Call 2 or 3 students to tell class what they talked about with their partner.

Day 4 

Meet the author: https://youtu.be/e2HgM0nnTzk (stop at 3:25).

Author reads the book: https://youtu.be/0ZnQiwPAjjQ

Day 5

Have students retell the story page by page

Look at Olympic divers: https://youtu.be/4ysjURAArmg

Writing Process

After the 5 days of close reading the next week or two students will work on writing their narrative.

Day 1

Make an anchor chart about Narrative writing and begin brainstorming stories.

(Narrative stories have a beginning, middle, and end).  Students will review the anchor charts about tone and character traits

Day 2

Review Narrative writing anchor chart and stories, students will pick a story to begin writing.  If unable to write students will begin drawing their narrative. The teacher will confer with students, looking over their progress, making sure the story makes sense, making sure they are implementing the different elements of narrative writing, and helping to write when students are unable to.  The students will share with a partner what they have written/drawn for the day.

Day 3

Students continue writing/drawing their narrative.  The teacher will confer with students, looking over their progress, making sure the story makes sense, making sure they are implementing the different elements of narrative writing, and helping to write when students are unable to.  Students will read their stories to a different partner than the day before.

Day 4

Students will finish their stories.  The teacher will confer with students, looking over their progress, making sure the story makes sense, making sure they are implementing the different elements of narrative writing, and helping to write when students are unable to.  Students will read to a different partner than the first two times

Day 5

Students will share their drawings/writings with the class.

After the reading of the four mentor texts and writing four different narratives.  Students will choose a final writing to revise and submit it to be published with Student Treasures.  We will also hold a publishing party where each student will read their chosen work to parents and other students

Appendix:  California Common Core State Standards

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.1

Write opinion pieces, in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.2

Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.3

Write narratives in which they recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened, use temporal words to signal event order, and provide some sense of closure.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.5

With guidance and support from adults, focus on a topic, respond to questions and suggestions from peers, and add details to strengthen writing as needed.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.1.8

With guidance and support from adults, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Bibliography

California School Dashboard (CA Dept. of Education). Accessed July 13, 2019. https://www.caschooldashboard.org/reports/01611686090492/2018.

Bacchioni, Shelby, and Rosanne L. Kurstedt. "Personalized Anchor Charts: Bridging Small-Group Work to Independence." The Reading Teacher 72, no. 5 (2018): 652-58. doi:10.1002/trtr.1772.

Chart Sense: Common Sense Charts to Teach 3-8 Informational Text and Literature

Oglan, Victoria A.Language Arts; Urbana Vol. 92, Iss. 5,  (May 2015): 368-369.

"Eight Characteristics of Good Writing." Writing Forward. Accessed July 16, 2019. https://www.writingforward.com/better-writing/characteristics-of-good-writing.

Graves, D. (1982). Six guideposts to a successful writing conference. Learning, 11(4), 76-77.

Harris, Windy Lynn. Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays: The Essential Guide to Getting Your Work Published. Cincinnati, OH: Writers Digest Books, an Imprint of F W Media, 2017.

Laminack, Lester. "Mentors and Mentor Texts: What, Why, and How?" The Reading Teacher 70, no. 6 (2017): 753-55. doi:10.1002/trtr.1578.

Manfra, Louis, Christina Squires, Laura H. B. Dinehart, Charles Bleiker, Suzanne C. Hartman, and Adam Winsler. "Preschool Writing and Premathematics Predict Grade 3 Achievement for Low-income, Ethnically Diverse Children." The Journal of Educational Research110, no. 5 (2016): 528-37. doi:10.1080/00220671.2016.1145095.

"Narrative Writing Mentor Texts." The Brown Bag Teacher. July 22, 2016. Accessed July 17, 2019. https://brownbagteacher.com/narrative-writing-mentor-texts/.

"NAEP Report Cards - Home." The Nation's Report Card. 2011. Accessed July 13, 2019. http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/.

"The Beginner's Guide to Planning and Writing a Memoir." The Write Life. July 03, 2015. Accessed July 16, 2019. https://thewritelife.com/the-beginners-guide-to-planning-and-writing-a-memoir/.

"The Norton Reader with 2016 MLA Update (Shorter Fourteenth Edition)." Amazon. Accessed July 13, 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Reader-Update-Shorter-Fourteenth/dp/0393617416. This book had many examples of personal narratives.

"What Are Mentor Texts?" Teach Mentor Texts. Accessed July 17, 2019. http://www.teachmentortexts.com/p/what-are-mentor-texts.html.

"What Is a Memoir." Creative Writing Courses and Ideas: An Online Resource for Writers. Accessed July 16, 2019. https://www.creative-writing-now.com/what-is-a-memoir.html.

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. Harper Paperbacks, 2013.

Picture Books Aren't Just for Kids! Modeling Text Structures through Nonfiction Mentor Books Hodges, Tracey S.; Matthews, Sharon D.; Voices From the Middle; Urbana Vol. 24, Iss. 4,  (May 2017): 74-79.

https://pin.it/y3xpt2vzwvru5g

https://pin.it/y3xpt2vzwvru5g

https://www.mrsrichardsonsclass.com/9-must-make-anchor-charts-for-writing/

Notes

1. The Nation’s Report Card
2. Manfra
3. California Dashboard
4. Norton
5. Harris
6. Close Reading in Elementary Schools/Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey; The Reading Teacher 66(3f), 179-188
7. Writing Conference Purpose and How It Positions Primary-Grade Children as Authoritative Agents or Passive Observers /Lisa K . Hawkins Volume 58 (3) Issue 1 March 2019 /Reading Horizons: A Journal of Literacy and Language Arts