Monday, July 22, 2013

Lesson 1: Starting with Turning Points

Today I taught this lesson during our Schoogle class. I introduced the topic of narrative writing as a type of personal blog that the students will publish and share the stories of their life. We started with identifying strategies that they already know that help them generate strong personal narratives. One that I had listed on the chart is listed below...


Strategies for Generating Personal Narrative Writing
  • Think of a PERSON who matters to you, list Small Moment stories connected to him/her and write one.
TEACHING POINT 
After that,  I identified the main teaching point. In her book, Narrative Craft, Lucy Calkins and Alexandra Marron describe the dialogue to set up the teaching point in this way. 

"Today I want to teach you a new strategy - one that helps people write powerful stories. It usually works to jot moments that have been turning points in your life. These might be first times or last times, or they might be times when you realized something important. Then you take one of those moments and write the whole story, fast and furious."
After sharing the teaching point, I shared my examples.....


  • The first time I hit a home run when I was playing Varsity softball for Amador.
  • The first time I rode my bike. 
  • The first time I went to Coloma Outdoor Education trip. 
  • The last time I played powder puff football.
  • The last time I held my moms hand. 
  • The last time I spoke with my dad.
  • A turning point in my life was when my fourth grade teacher read aloud, Where the Red Fern Grows.  
  • When I got engaged and married. 
  • When each of my children were born. 
At this point, the kids really wanted to share their ideas....I partner them up and give them time to share their ideas with each other.

We come together as a group and share out a couple ideas. Then...if they are ready to write, I excuse them to their laptops. If they need more time to brainstorm, they stay with me. 3 kids stayed with me to generate more ideas.

Once they were all at their lap tops, I walk around and celebrate the ideas being typed into their blog. I realize that some of them would rather format their blog rather that write their narrative. I monitor the work and encourage them to write for 25 minutes and then give them the incentive to format their blog and text after a drafting time. After 25 minutes of writing, they share their writing with their writing partner and work on format.

At that point, time was up. Looking forward to tomorrow's lesson...Dreaming the dream of the story.

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