choose a place and time and take yourself back there in an original story
This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Christy Hodge at an AT&T-sponsored in-service class for teachers.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book George Washington's Socks by Elvira Woodruff. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :
Step one (sharing the published model):Christy suggests, "It is important that your class reads the entire book in order to benefit from all it has to offer. George Washington's Socks is a wonderful book to share with your grade students in order to take an up–close look at the Revolutionary War and hardships that many endured."
Book synopisis: While camping out in Tony's backyard, ten-year old Matthew, his friends, and his younger sister, Katie, decide to take a walk along Lake Levart. They end up coming across an old boat that takes them back in time to the Revolutionary War. Matthew, Quentin, Hooter, Tony, and Katie experience the American Revolutionary War firsthand.
The writing assignment below guides students into learning about a significant time in history in a fun way. Discuss the important historical knowledge they gained from the story of George Washington’s’ Socks. Lead the students into a discussion about the Revolutionary War and how the author incorporated many true historical events into the friends' adventure. Discuss the importance of an author understanding historical events that occurred in order to write a story like this.
Step two (introducing student models of writing): In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson. The groups will certainly talk about the idea development, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might also have your students talk about the organization in the writing too.
We're looking for additional student samples for many grade levels for this prompt! Help us get some, and we'll send you a free resource for your classroom! Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.
Step three (thinking, talking, and pre-writing):The Interactive Button Game on the Student Instructions Page will get your students thinking about a historical era to research for their own "back in time" stories. You can have them research their historical era using Yahooligans or Google.
As they research, explain to them that they will need to mention specific events that occur in the era they have chosen. Giving them a graphic organizer can help them sort out their facts and ideas. You can use any type of graphic organizer. I chose to use a bubble model representing the five W’s and a one bubble listing ten facts they researched.
After they have made a rough draft of a graphic organizer with researched facts, you might have them publish their graphic organizer using Kidspiration. This is a program used to generate a graphic organizer on the computer. Having the students generate their own graphic organizer through the computer will allow them to revise and edit any ideas they may have. A graphic organizer will help the students prepare the guts for their writing. It will encourage idea development and organization of their paper.
After the students finish their graphic organizer, have them begin writing their paper. The students can write their story drafts on the drafting sheet below, which will remind them to use good idea development skills as they write.
Step four (revising with specific trait language): To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts. Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5." Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.
Step five (editing for conventions): After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor. If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers. With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it. The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.
Step six (publishing for the portfolio): When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block. Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here. Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.
Interested in publishing student work on-line? We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers. This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.
Learn more about author Elvira Woodruff by clicking here.
