Making Inferences to Create Character

OBJECTIVE
Students will define and graph character traits in order to write about a memorable character.

The Memorable Person (you’re going to write about)

• Remember Paul Auster’s “He remembers” and “I remember”?
• He wrote about himself as if he were another person.
• What do you think about the character he created?
• In the next two days, we’ll be working on character traits.

THE BLUES & “The Treasure of Lemon Brown”
By Walter Dean Myers
p.334

THINK ALOUD
As you read ask yourself connecting questions, visualize, predict:
What does the story make me think about?
What does it remind me of?
What was life like for Lemon Brown?
What does Lemon Brown mean when he says, “Every man got a treasure”? How might this relate to the theme of the story?

Tell me about the Characters, please.
Glossary of Literary Terms
Character traits: unique attributes or characteristics of a character
Infer: to deduce, guess or reason
Inferences: to draw a conclusion or make a decision based on knowledge or evidence
Dynamic characters: Characters who change throughout the story
Static characters: Characters who remain the same throughout the story

Independent Writing

OBJECTIVE
Students will begin their independent writing routine.

QUICK REVIEW BEFORE YOU WRITE
Review your writing ideas from previous lessons.
Ask yourself if you’d like to use any of these ideas or use the process to create new ones.
Questions before you start?

REMEMBER TO....
Good writers write about familiar experiences and use them to write fiction (The Pigman) or autobiographical pieces (“The Jacket”).
Use details and descriptive language.
Use details and descriptive language.
Use details and descriptive language.

WRITE NOW!

• If you have a writing topic, start now.
• If you do not have a writing topic:
• Look over your past entries in Sentence Explorations and Writing Explorations.
• Take a deep breath.
• Try to think of a topic one more time.
• Okay, Okay. Raise your hand.

Creating Norms For Sharing Out

In the front of our classroom in Rm. 206 is a chair. That chair is where students share what they've written during Writers Workshop. The lesson below is where students took the time to create norms for themselves.

OBJECTIVE
Students will create norms for the readers/writers chair in order for sharing out in the chair to take place in a way that promotes a learning community where all are respected.

Guide For Responding to Author/Readers Chair & Critics

• Provides tips for responding to the writer as a critic.
• List will grow throughout the year as we move forward.

Students share out about what they expect as writers sitting in the chair and as critics sitting in the audience from their classmates.

Strategies of Good Writers

• Writers choose subjects that have special meaning to them
• Writers focus on the most important moments
• Writers expand the moments and use the six senses (what they see, hear, smell, taste, feel and touch).
• Writers tell about their lives in the first person
• Writers create fictional characters based on their own memories.

Another Word For Your Glossary of Literary Terms p.171 (Writers Notebook)
Theme: a thought or idea the author presents to the reader that may be deep, difficult to understand, or even have a moral; Themes allow the reader to understand part of the author’s purpose in writing the book.

To do: Each time you read and write, ask yourself: The most important thing about this story is…

Close
We now have another artifact in the classroom listing what students will expect from each other as writers and critics. At some point, I'll take a photo of it and post it online.

Mimicking A Sentence Pattern

OBJECTIVE
Students will remain focused on one writing idea in order to expand their ability to create viable writing topics.

5-minute silent read
“The Book of Memory, Book Thirteen” by Paul Auster
Think About It: What might have inspired the writer to write this passage after his father passed away?

TOOLS YOU'LL BE USING

• What were the effects of repetition in “The Book of Memory, Book of Thirteen” (“He remembers…”)?
• As a reader, what are the differences between third person and first person narration?

YOUR ZOOM IN
Step 1 Create a new page in “Writing Explorations” of your Writers Notebook called
“Zooming In on a Moment”
Step 2 Zoom in on a moment from your "He/She Remembers" "I Remember" piece.
Step 3 Ask yourself Why does Auster use he instead of I for his list of memories?

Can You Borrow the Writing Technique Correctly?

from “The Book of Memory, Book Thirteen”, Paul Auster

First-Person Narrative

• Make a new entry in the Writing Explorations section of your Writer’s Notebook: “I Remember: Mimicking Paul Auster”
• Start writing an “I Remember…” of your own. You have only 10 minutes.
• If you have trouble starting, turn to previous entries in your Writers Explorations section and your Sentence Explorations section.
• When you finish writing, re-read your writing for spelling and punctuation.
• First-person pronouns: I, we, us, our
  

Example: I remember a hospital bed and the doctor’s empty timelines. I remember my grandma’s pallid face and her lonely pinky wrapped in white gauze. I remember my granddaddy asking me to make a trip down the long, dusty graveled road for Grey Goose and cigarettes. I remember the thick laughter that followed, slow as dough kneaded by my mother’s hands.

Second-Person Narrative

• What is a Third-Person narrative?
• Turn to your Glossary of Literary Terms on page 171.
• Third-person narrative: The participants in the narrative are distinct or separate from the person telling the story and the person who is reading it and who its being read to; perspective from the outside looking in; a story told as its happening to someone else.
• Third-person pronouns: she, he, her, his, their, they
  

Take the Style & Use It!

• Under your First-Person Narrative, skip two lines and write your First-Person narrative as a Third-Person Narrative.
• Start writing a “He Remembers…” OR “She Remembers…” of your own. You have only 7 minutes.
• When you finish: highlight or underline your favorite lines in both passages.

Example: She remembers a hospital bed and the doctor’s empty time lines. She remembers her grandma’s pallid face and her lonely pinky wrapped in white gauze. She remembers her granddaddy asking her to make a trip down the long, dusty graveled road for Grey Goose and cigarettes. She remembers the thick laughter that followed, slow as dough kneaded by her mother’s hands.

MIMICKING A SENTENCE PATTERN
Zoom In Strategy (Read Aloud/Think Aloud)

• Is there a memory that may be a candidate for more writing?
• Return and reread the Passage
• Select a line where I have more to write because the memory is such a strong “photograph” in my mind.

Wide Angle: She remembers the thick laughter that followed, slow as dough kneaded by her mother’s hands.

Zoom In: She remembers her grandma’s voice like summer rain waking her from a deep slumber. She remembers climbing out of bed as the red fleece blanket slides slowly to the floor. She remembers her toes hitting the ice cold of the floor. She remembers her narrowed eyes twisting themselves into a smile as she listens to the conversations of adults in the kitchen. She remembers the smell of buttermilk biscuits wafting over her nose as the red Saturday morning sun rose its way into the breakfast sky.

SHARE OUT

• Read the class your favorite line. (5 min)
• What’s the difference between first-person and third-person?

What Should Be in Your Reader's Notebook

5p today marked the end of 1st quarter here in PG County. Here's what should be in your child's Readers Notebook so far since the midpoint of the quarter:

9/29 What emotions or feelings did you have while reading the text?
9/30 What is the setting of the text? Is the setting of the text important to your story? Why?
10/1 Does the setting remind you of a place you know? What is the place and how does it remind you of it?
10/2 What events are connected most to the setting? Why? OR What is an important event that occurs in the book? Where does it occur?
10/3 If you could take on the qualities of any character in the text, what qualities would those be? What character would they come from?
10/6 What would be the main character's response or take on the upcoming election?
10/7 How does the author let you know what the setting is?
10/8 Does the setting affect what the characters do or don't do? How?
10/10 Why did the author choose the narrator he/she did for the story?
10/13 Do you think the characters in your story are believable?
10/14 Give a summary of what happened in your story today.
10/15 Which character or characters do you think have learned the hardest lesson in the text? Why?
10/16 What idea image or situation meant the most to you as you read the text? Why?
10/20 What do you think will happen next in your book? Why?
10/21 If you could talk with thee author of this text, what would you ask him or her OR what would you comment on?
10/22 If you were going to recommend this text to someone, who would it be? What in this text would the person like?
10/23 What are your thoughts about the text so far? What in the text is causing those thoughts?
10/24 If you could take any passage and make it a play or skit what would it be? Why?
10/28 Does the setting make difference in how you view your characters? Why? Why not?
10/29 Choose your own dilemma?
10/30 What/who is the biggest problem facing the main character of your book right now?