This Lesson's Title:
Unlikely Diary Keepers
reporting on learned facts with an unusual "Dear Diary" scenario
This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Corbett Harrison. Check out 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 picture book Diary of a Worm by Doreen Cronin. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
Check out Diary of a Worm at Amazon.com.
Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library. |
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :
Step one (sharing the published model): Share Diary of a Worm with your students. Talk about how author Doreen Cronin conveys real facts about an invertebrate (a worm) in an unlikely format (the worm's imaginary diary) and successfully shares interesting facts while using humor. Read the story a second time; stop after each entry and ask students, "What fact about worms did the author just talk or joke about?" Tell the students they will be writing their own unlikely diaries.
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Step two (introducing 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 should certainly talk about the idea development, but you might prompt your students to talk about each model's voice as well.
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Step three (thinking and pre-writing): This on-line assignment comes with two tools you can print and use with your student writers. The research gathering tool below will give your students a place to record interesting new facts they learn as they prepare to write to this assignment. The rough draft worksheet allows students to begin transforming learned facts into voice-filled unlikely diary entries.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Learn more about author Doreen Cronin by clicking here.
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