This Lesson's Title:
Scheming against an Adversary
writing an original tale of non-violent revenge
This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant Mimi Melarkey at an SBC-sponsored inservice class. |
The intended "mentor text" to  be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Enemy Pie by Derek Munson. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
Check out Enemy Pie 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): Before reading Enemy Pie, Derek Munson's emotion-based book, ask students to brainstorm possible reasons why someone might have to spend time with someone that they are having a disagreement with. Talk about what someone might secretly think about when in a situation like this. What type of person gets mad enough to plot revenge or plans to do mean things to the other person?
Then enjoy reading the story. Keep stopping, and ask your students to predict how they think this story will resolve itself. When done, have students help you create a list of the most memorable details they remember from the book. Talk about the power of details in a good story.
The writing activity inspired by the interactive button game above is intended to make a writer brainstorm, plan, and create a unique story about scheming revenge against someone he/she is temporarily angry with. The writer's big purposes here are to a) include original ideas for "revenge" in the narrator's narration, and to b) think about a satisfying way to start and resolve the story, just as Derek Munson does in Enemy Pie. Students might try to further inspire their stories by basing it on personal experiences.
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Step two (introducing models of writing): Before students plan and write their own stories, have them look at one or all of the student samples provided below. The trait discussion tool that comes with each lesson is designed to make them look at and specifically talk about each story's idea development and organization.
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Step three (thinking and pre-writing): After students have discussed student samples, pass out the one-page worksheet to help them plan their own detailed and well-organized tales.
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Step four (revising with specific trait language): Two tools for revision are provided below. You can use one or both, depending on how much time you have to spend on this assignment.
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 Derek Munson by clicking here.
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