pre-planning your beginning, middle, and end before writing
This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Lance Ferguson at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Tuesday by David Wiesner. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :
Step one (sharing the published model):Tuesday, written by David Wiesner, is the amazing story of a magical Tuesday night when the frogs can suddenly fly on their lily pads. They encounter different people and have different adventures. The author is able to tell this story with very few words, but make no mistake: this adventure has a beginning that launches us into the story, an interesting middle, and one of those "to be continued" typeendings. The story has an order to the night's activities that is shown mostly through pictures.
Teachers should stress, as they share Tuesday, what the author has done particularly well in writing this story: in this case, author David Wiesner has creatively “shown” us through pictures what happens to a particular pond of frogs on a particular Tuesday night. But more importantly, he has crafted a tale with a definite beginning, middle, and end. Wiesner does this without words, which is very difficult to do.
Have your students put into words Tuesday's beginning, middle, and end. Talk about how they know they are in the beginning or the middle or the end of the story. Talk about how there are at least three different "plot events" in the middle of the story, which is a sign of a thorough story. You might even chart the beginning, middle, and end visually, and leave it in a place where your student writers can use the chart as a model. After all, organization doesn't just happen in writing; writers need to plan (often graphically) their stories before composing, if they are to understand the trait of organization.
Step two (introducing student models of writing): Before having your students pre-write to create their own animal adventures, have them discuss any of the student samples that come with this writing lesson. You should certainly have them discuss each model's organization, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might also encourage them to talk about each model's idea development too.
We're looking for student samples for all grade levels for this prompt! Help us get some, and we'll send you free books for your classroom! Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing): Time to plan to write an original weird animal adventure. The interactive button game on the Student Instruction Page will give them some ideas to launch their original stories, but they can certainly brainstorm original ideas with some good modeling.
Once students have their ideas, have them fill out this lesson's pre-writing graphic organizer. It is strongly suggested that you facilitate some student-to-student conversations about their completed graphic organizers before they begin drafting their actual stories.
As they draft, encourage them to find the places where new paragraphs should naturally begin. Certainly their beginnings and ends should be separate paragraphs, and perhaps their stories' middles will be long enough (and action-packed enough) to warrant several paragraphs. The graphic organizer, if used well, should help students make these connections.
You might want to have students compose their rough drafts on this two-page drafting sheet, which comes with an organization checklist for students to complete after they written their first draft.
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.
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.
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.
