SELF-CHECK
During and after your writing, ask yourself these questions:
I chose my topic by pulling a line from a writing entry in my Writers Notebook, "My History As A Writer." This was my first entry in the Writers Notebook. Students can pull their lines from any other entry they want. In this entry, I discussed how my mother taught me how to read and write and encouraged my writing.
favorite dress is a gown my father bought me for college graduation.
and has made that clear. He sternly said one day, “I don’t like planes.” Another day, he told me that my decision to move to Boston. The choice was mine to make and mine to deal with. The dress? Maybe he felt guilty for what he said or maybe he was apologetic for not being able to travel. I sympathize. September 11 is a difficult moment for us all to grapple with in our personal histories.
OBJECTIVE
11/7 Show Not Tell: Setting, Mood, Character Traits & Making Inferences- Words, phrases, ideas that don’t make sense or could be said better another way.
- Spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.
| Portion of the Text | Character Who is the character in the story? | Characterization What does the character say, do, think? | Trait What trait best describes the character? Why? |
| pg. 242 Paragraph 4: “I threw it on my brother’s bed and looked at it for a long time before I slipped it on and went out into the backyard, smiling a thank you to my mom as I passed her in the kitchen.” | Gary Soto |
| Gary Soto is respectful. Although he did not receive the jacket he wanted, he still tried on the jacket and attempted to make it look decent on him. Instead of disrespecting his mother for not buying him the jacket he wanted, Gary “smiles thank you” to her and appears grateful for her purchase. Other possible traits are:
|
| Details About Winter | Details About Spring | Details About Autumn |
| “Sometimes in winter the snowdrifts are so deep that the institution is cut off from the village below, from all the world.” | | |
Researchers at the University of Otago in New Zealand discovered an important link between the ability to tell stories, memory and the way mother's tell their children stories. I'm really interested in this right now because in class, we're covering Features of a Good Story. Specifically, we're discussing how students can become great writers by: 1) telling stories with a lot of descriptive language and 2) using their ability to recall what they already know and merge it with what they're learning from reading to make inferences.The study by the Department of Psychology researchers found that Māori mothers appear to talk with their children in richer ways about significant events involving them, such as their birth.
Study co-author Associate Professor Elaine Reese says discussing past events in richer detail during early childhood has previously been linked to children more effectively storing their early memories.
"This new study provides the first evidence that Māori children experience a richer narrative environment than New Zealand European children and that these rich stories transfer to children's storytelling skill," Associate Professor Reese says. Read Full Article
IN YOUR WRITER'S NOTEBOOK...
10/16/2008 Images That May Lead to Writing Ideas
Partner Share
• Break into pairs.
• Decide who goes first.
• The first writer reads aloud his/her list of images.
• The partner selects one image that’s especially interesting and asks the writer to tell the story behind the image.
• Repeat the process.
• Each partner is given 5 minutes to read and tell story.
Next Steps
• Review your list by scanning through what you wrote.
• Circle or put a star, heart or check by the idea that you are most interested in writing about.
• You don’t have to write about the idea your partners chose.
• It’s all about you!
15-Minute Quick Write
• Once you’ve chosen your idea, skip 3 lines and begin a new entry in “Writing Explorations.”
• Enter a date and heading using the image you’ve chosen (Example: “The Drive-Thru”)
• WRITE! Remember, the details. Paint a picture by showing, not just telling us.
WRITING & THINKING CRITICALLY
OBJECTIVE
Students will identify features of a story in order to generate topics for a good story.
Another Word for Your Glossary of Literary Terms
• Simile: Comparison using “like” or “as”. Similes allow things to remain distinct in spite of their similarities. Examples: “arms feeling like braille”; “teeth chattered like a cup of crooked dice”; “girls who had been friendly, blew away like loose flowers”
IN-CLASS WRITING ASSIGNMENT
• In your “Writing Explorations” section: Describe an object or a place WITHOUT telling us what it is.
• Name it: “Features of a Great Story”
• When you finish, return and describe your object or place using similes for words like a lot, fat, pretty, beautiful, long, skinny, fat.
BEFORE EXAMPLE
Her hair was long and her legs were fat. That’s why they called her Pumpkin because of her legs. But it was her face that really made people pay attention. Her eyes were dark brown. Her lips were pretty.
AFTER EXAMPLE
Her hair was long like the Nile River and her legs her fat like a pumpkin. That’s why they called her Pumpkin because of her legs. But it was her face that really made people pay attention. Her eyes were like two dark brown almonds roasted to perfection. Her lips were like rose petals and it was as if God himself made her eyelashes.
FEATURES OF A GOOD STORY
My different mods all came up with different ideas about what makes a good story. While there were many consistencies, there were also a lot of different (and unique) opinions on what makes a story dynamite! Here are some of them:
• Gets your attention right away.
• Keeps you in suspense.
• Uses words that makes the story seem real.
• Situation and/or characters are real.
• Characters talk like real people.
• Story is funny.
• Good description.
• Good action!
• Great ending.
• The ending resolves all of the action and is final.
• Makes you think!
• Good descriptions that help you visualize.
• The settings are anywhere in the world (or not)
• Lots of drama (people arguing, fighting)
THINK ABOUT IT
•What are your favorite features of a good story? Why?
•Do you see yourself developing as a writer? Why or why not?
When you summarize…
YOU DO!
1. Collaborate on completing responses to the five prompts for "The Jacket" and one other story.
2. Be prepared to present your responses to the class.
3. Write neatly & large enough for others to read from a distance.
4. If you finish BEFORE time is called, you may draw caricatures or symbols to accompany your words.
FIVE PROMPTS YOU NEED TO SUMMARIZE A PLOT
Somebody: Who is the Main Character?
Wanted: What does the main character want?
But: What is the conflict? What/who is preventing the character from getting what he/she wants?
So: What does the character do to solve the conflict?
Then: How does the story resolve itself or end? How does the character move on?
From "The Jacket" by Gary Soto:
2. Read Aloud/Think Aloud: I read "My Name" from The House on Mango Street by Mexican-American author Sandra Cisneros and relate it to my name's history. By modeling my story, students get an idea of the methods they should use when thinking about how to borrow an idea from a professional writer.In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.YOUR WRITERS NOTEBOOK
It was my great-grandmother's name and now it is mine. She was a horse woman too, born like me in the Chinese year of the horse--which is supposed to be bad luck if you're born female-but I think this is a Chinese lie because the Chinese, like the Mexicans, don't like their women strong.
I Do/We Do
Think About It!
This is our closing, a time when students reflect on what we've covered during our 70 minutes of class time. Mainly they verbalize what they've learned about themselves as readers, reading strategies they will implement, areas they'd like to make improvements in and areas they're flourishing in as readers/students.• Focused on reading some of the time.
• Read independently most of the time.
• You respect other readers most of the time by following rituals and routines.
• Most of the time, you work as hard as you can and have all of your reading materials ready.
• You read texts from a few different genres.
• You record your reading progress in your Reading Log most of the time.
• Most of the time, you use reading strategies from the Opening to solve reading problems during independent reading time. Other times, you continue reading without fixing the problem.
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