Mimicking Charles Dickens, then fixing those punctuation errors
This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Corbett Harrison. You can access all of Corbett's on-line lessons by clicking here.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 1 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): Place this overhead-ready copy of Dickens' opening to A Tale of Two Cities where students can see it. Review the word antonym, and have student groups brainstorm alternative antonyms to as many of the items in the series as they can. For example, "It was the best of times, it was the most awful of times..."
Explain that Charles Dickens created this very long, comma-splice filled passage for effect. He was a professional; he was allowed to break sentence punctuation rules. Student writers aren't so lucky; they have to follow the rules. Explain, "Today, we're going to each write a parody of Mr. Dickens' passage, using a more modern day topic, and then we're going to use coordinating conjunction, adverbial conjunctions, and subordinating conjunctions to have our passages completely free of comma splices."
Tell students their parodies of Dickens need to include, at least, 6 pairs of interesting, well-chosen antonyms, and that their parodies will need to conclude with an "In short" sentence, like Dickens does.
Step two (introducing the teacher model): To show what a parody looks like, create one of your own before teaching this lesson, or use the one I provide here. You really should make your own though about a topic that intrigues you!
Only show the top half of this overhead; the second half will be revealed later.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing): Get students thinking about a person, place, or thing that might be the best and the worst simultaneously. The interactive button game on the Student Instruction Page has 20 great sentence starters for this assignment, if your students can't think of one on their own.
Have students create their rough drafts while they refer to Dickens' model (or the teacher model) on the overhead. If some students finish early, encourage them to go back and choose even stronger words for their antonyms.
When all writers have a draft with at least 6 antonym pairs and an "in short" sentence that serves as a conclusion, teach a mini-lesson on punctuating for coordinating, then adverbial, then, subordinating conjunctions. These can all be done in one day, or you can spread them out over three days. The overheads to help you teach this mini-lesson can be found below.
Have students apply each conjunction rule to sentences in their own writing. When all three mini-lessons have been taught, show the bottom half of the the teacher model overhead, and have students revise their original passages. In the revision, students:
can have no comma splices
must use (and punctuate for) six different conjunctions--two coordinating, two adverbial, two subordinating
Step four (revising with specific trait language): The teacher model (from the overhead) has some obvious word revisions between its original and the second draft (at the bottom of the same overhead). Encourage revision between students' original, comma-spliced passages and their second drafts. Consider attaching a Word Choice Post-It to their rough drafts to encourage word revisions. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.
Step four (editing for conventions): After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to have a fellow editor check their punctuation. 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 Charles Dickens by clicking here.
