This Lesson's Title:

"Lawd! Lawd! Lawd!"

playing with dialects while reviewing dialogue punctuation

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant
Susan Potter 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 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from the first four pages of this novel.

Check out Flowers for Algernon at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Inspired by the character Charlie in Daniel Keye’s Flowers for Algernon, the writer will craft sentences, using different dialects/sayings with correct dialogue punctuation. The writer will devote a page in his/her writers notebook to these sentences, and throughout the year he/she will be invited to explore a different dialect by adding a new sentence to the page. Late in the year, the writer will choose a favorite dialogue sentence and write an extended scene of dialogue based on that sentence. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait is conventions; the dialect-inspired sentences that go on the page in the writers notebook will be perfectly punctuated by the writer. The support trait is idea development; the words spoken by the character and any descriptions in the sentence's tag line should show the reader what type of person the character is.