This Lesson's Title:
Giving Voice to Opposites
voice descriptors inspire two opposite monologues
This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant Denise Boswell at an SBC-sponsored inservice class. |
The intended "mentor text" to  be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book I am the Dog I am the Cat by Donald Hall. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
Check out I Am the Dog I Am the Cat 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): Donald Hall's I am the Dog I am the Cat is a perfect book to help students create the all-important trait of voice in their writing. Each page of this funny book is told from either the dog’s or the cat’s point-of-view. These pet/animal personality traits make it fun to write with voice.
Teachers should ask students what the author has done well in writing this story after reading it aloud. In this case, the author uses creative word choice to create hilarious contrasts of the two companions, a cat and a dog. More importantly, he has created a voice for each character by focusing on the dog and catlike qualities that everyone who has ever known and loved a pet can recognize. Be sure to point out how Barry Moser's amazing illustrations help us create the animals' voices with such ease.
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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 will certainly talk about the voice, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might prompt your students to talk about each model's idea development as well.
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Step three (thinking and pre-writing): The interactive button game on the Student Instructions Page will give your students ideas for opposites and voice descriptors to use in this assignment, but they can certainly come up with their own ideas. Give each student a worksheet from below. As they prepare to write, have them record their choices at the top of the worksheet. As they write, keep reminding them to pay attention to their voice descriptors.
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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 and poet Donald Hall
by clicking here.
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