Last Week in Literacy

Last Week we drew a mountain in our composition books and planned our personal narrative about our special place. A mountain plan is great for planning our fiction narrative stories (later in the year) because it shows how we introduce our characters and/or settings at the beginning of our stories. As we move up the mountain, we build the action of the story. As you probably know, most great narratives have a problem. On the mountain plan, you can decide how the problem will get worse and worse until you reach the top of the mountain. As with climbers, reaching the top is the best part! This is the "climax." Something has to been done about the problem at this point. We want this to be the best part of our story. Slowly, we descend the mountain and our story works it's way to the end where we have a resolution to all our problems.

Well, when we use the mountain plan for our personal narrative we "tweak it" just a little. There may not be a problem in our personal narrative, but we want our story to be the most exciting at the top. We can plan the actions, climbing up the mountain, that lead to the excitement at the top. Then, we can begin to "wrap up" our story as we descend the mountain until our story ends (hopefully leaving the reader satisfied).

Many students finished their rough draft and met with a partner. They switch composition books and read each other's stories. As they read, they listened to their "inner voice" and "chunk and chew" the story. The wrote their "thinking" down on sticky notes and posted them in the composition book where it made them think. Sometimes they may write, "I really like the way you described your character here." or "I can't really get a picture of the setting here, it needs more details." or may they wrote, "I'm confused here." When both readers finished they exchanged their composition books again and read what the other person wrote on the stickies. Then they talked and gave suggestions on how they could each make their stories better. This is called "peer revising," taking what's in the writing and trying to make it even better. Now they go back and rewrite.

Two books that we read that helped us focus on our writing were:

Owl Moon by Jane Yolan
This is an amazing look at the experience of a child, spending special time with dad, owl watching. It is a great way to demonstrate "seed stories" (Lucy Calkins) because it describes the child's feelings and thinking about one short experience. The descriptions of the setting and experience paint a picture through all 5 senses.

Whales Passing by Eve Bunting
This is another great book by Eve Bunting. Mrs. Bunting captures the feelings and thoughts of a young boy as he stands on a cliff whale watching with his father. It is a wonderful "seed Story" (Lucy Calkins) and mentor text for students because it demonstrates the ability to write about one experience that made a big impact in a "short" amount of time. The setting is decribed in great detail with lots of figurative language that emerging writer may "capture" and add to their own writing style.

Oct. 5 through Oct. 16

During English Literacy, we are working on the writing process. So far, we have read several stories about "Special Places." These books include: All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan & paintings by Mike Wimmer, Let's Go Home: the wonderful things about a house by Cynthia Rylant & illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin, Roxaboxen by Alice McLerran & illustrated by Barbara Cooney, and A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood & illustrated by Dan Anderson.

Next we brainstormed a list of places that are special to us and chose one place to write about. Before we decided on our special place we discussed the difference between writing watermelon stories, slices of watermelons, and seed stories, ask your child about it. We then drew a "map" of our special place. This is another way to brainstorm and helps us think of details about the setting and things we do in our special place. After that, we used an Alphabet Taxonomy to think of the things we see, smell, taste, touch, feel, and do in our special place. An Alphabet Taxonomy is a graphic organizer that has each letter of the alphabet on a line. We think of as many things as we can, about our special place, that begins with each letter. As I told the students, the Alphabet Taxonomy may not be the best way to brainstorm for each person-it's definitely not my favorite. But we are trying it out and if it works for some students they may use it as a brainstorming tool whenever they want. It doesn't really help me very often, but I was amazed at how many things I was able to brainstorm for my special place and Cass came up with over 200 words on his.

Next week, we are going to look at different authors and their styles of writing-specifically looking at how they describe settings. We will create a "mountain plan" of personal narrative, this helps us to organize our writing before we start. Then we are off to the races with our own writing! We will write a "seed" story about one thing we have done in our special place, making sure we really describe the setting and the actions in detail.

I can't wait to see what the students write about!