diary entries from historical characters that parallel life
This lesson was developed for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant Denise Boswell during 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 The Skin I'm In by Sharon G. Flake. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially the diary entries that start in chapter 5 of the book.
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):In the book The Skin I’m In by Sharon Flake, the main character, Maleeka, finds herself a seventh grader in an inner city Junior High School. She is very intelligent; math and numbers are her strength. She has an opportunity to attend an accelerated school with her best friend, Sweets, but Maleeka freezes during the interview. Throughout the year, she is bullied by Charlese, and she succumbs to peer pressure and starts a fire. Maleeka tries to make sense of the events in her life by writing diary entries about Alkeema’s (the character Maleeka creates) experiences on the slave ship. Author Sharon Flake creates precise pictures in each reader’s heads by using descriptive words, appealing to the senses, and by connecting Maleeka’s experiences with Alkeema’s.
Introduce The Skin I’m In to your students with this explanation: “This story is about a 7th grade girl who attends an inner city Junior High School. Maleeka is pretty, smart, and she's the target of the school bully. Maleeka tries to process the events in her life through her diary writing from an invented character's point-of-view. Sharon Flake uses descriptions that focus on the senses. Why would she do that?" After hearing your students' opinions and thoughts, share with them excerpts from the book. The diary entries begin in Chapter 5, but continue throughout the novel.
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, because of the embedded discussion tool that comes with each set. You might also have your students talk about the word choice in the writing too.
We're looking for student samples for all 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 and pre-writing): Next, explain to your students that they will be writing about an event in their lives as if they were a diary-keeping character from history. They will be using their senses to create "showing, not telling" descriptions. The interactive button on the Student Instructions Pagewill give them some good ideas of characters from history, but they can use a character they generated themselves.
Use the printable worksheet below to help students organize their ideas before writing. You might want to have an overhead version of the graphic organizer below as well as individual student copies. You might want to use the overhead to create a class model of this writing before asking students to write independently.
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 Sharon G. Flake
by clicking here.
