using EMPHASIS in a fairy tale scene inspired by a clever title
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 The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Bob Hartman. 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:
Pre-Step (before sharing the published model): A spoonerism happens when a speaker accidentally interchanges two sounds or syllables in a sentence or phrase. "A fine kettle of fish" might become "A Kine fettle of fish." "It's customary to kiss the bride" might become "It's kisstumary to cuss the bride."
Spoonerism is an eponym (a word named for an actual person) that comes from the reverend W.A. Spooner, who was notoriously prone to slips of the tongue of this type. There are some funny examples of his spoonerisms here. Share them with your class. Laugh a lot.
Then tell them you will be reading a story today whose title is not a spoonerism, but it's kind of close to the idea: The Wolf Who Cried Boy.
Step one (sharing the published model): Teachers should stress, as they read The Wolf Who Cried Boy aloud, what the author has done particularly well in writing this story: in this case, author Bob Hartman not only has a funny title that drives his whole story, but he also uses techniques that add emphasis to the characters' words. Pass the book around to different readers, and have them read certain pages aloud with as much fluency as possible. When a student emphasizes a word or phrase (because of Hartman's emphasis techniques), stop and ask, "How did you know to say that word so it sounded more important to the story?" Discuss why an author would do this.
Be sure to point out how the EMPHASIS techniques occur in both the dialogue and in the narration. You will be requiring your students to add emphasis in both places too.
Step two (introducing models of writing): Students will be asked to 1) tweak the title of a well-known fairy tale as an inspiration to fracture the story, 2) create a first-person point-of-view scene from the story they envision, 3) use emphasis techniques in both the scene's narration and dialogue. To help students understand this assignment, put the student sample below on your classroom overhead; using the discussion tool at the bottom of Devin's story will have your students think about this assignment and its requirements.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing): If students can't think of an idea for a story to "fracture," they can press the buttons on the Student Instructions Page, which will give them well-known titles that can be fractured for this assignment. If your students think of their own titles to use for this assignment, by all means, let them.
Once they have titles chosen where they can switch or change words to make a funny new title, have them talk over their initial story ideas in small groups. Have them ask each other, "What might happen in this fractured story?" It's okay for them to think of the whole story first; just be sure to give them time (and permission) to then narrow down their story idea into a scene that they will write for this assignment.
The worksheet below will help them plan the basics of their scene.
Once your students have completed the worksheet, put up Devin's completed scene on the overhead again to remind them of the assignment's specific requirements. If you spot students using different EMPHASIS techniques as they draft, share their techniques with the whole class to encourage diverse thinking.
Step four (revising with specific trait language): One tool for revision is provided below. 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.
Learn more about fracturing fairy tales by clicking here!
