Soccer Sketch by Lauren Castillo
My class of learners has been working on personal narratives since we returned from Christmas break. The concept of a narrative is easy to understand. A story with characters, setting, conflict, and dialogue; they have all heard, read, and likely written one of these themselves. There are two different types of narratives: fictional, and personal. Many 8 year old students have an incredibly active imagination and for the most part think of fictional narratives when initially brought up. I wanted to push my students to write about themselves. I think there is a certain level of insecurity that comes with writing about yourself rather than made up characters. The first day we began working on our personal narratives I told them to brainstorm some memories they have. "I don't have any memories" is what these students with 8, some with 9, years of life experience full of memories.
I was shocked, frustrated, bewildered.
This was until I tried to do the same myself and couldn't come up with a single memory in my 23 years of life that I could write about. Last week I told you that we tried out a strategy of having my students write a list of important people in their lives before listing as many memories they can about that list of people. This was a fascinating thing to explore. They were all of a sudden passionate writers; moving their pencil faster than ever before. A stark contrast to what I saw when I simply asked them to brainstorm memories.
This week, one of the Your Turn lessons I wanted to try out was Lesson 1: Using an Inverted Triangle to Find a Specific Writing Topic (Dorfman & Cappelli, 2017). When I tried this strategy out for myself, I found myself wanting to write more than my initial triangle would allow! This is a great strategy because it helps me narrow my focus from one of my comfortable writing territories (Mammaw) to a more detailed memory I have with her (above).
Last week we had so much snow. We ended up having several Inclement Weather Remote Days instead of in person learning. At 1:00 of Tuesday/Friday, my students leave me for Art. This, of course, was just a separate Google Meet last week with the weather. What I love about these days is my students coming back to me at 1:30 excitedly showing me what they had created and worked on the last 30 minutes. Last week they drew maps. Some drew maps of their neighborhood, some of downtown Boone, some of the inside of their house. Imagine my surprise when I read about the lesson of Creating a Neighborhood Map, Lesson 4! I hadn't even thought about how that map they created could lead into writing. In choosing the place they drew a map of, they would likely have connections and memories about the location. In the sample Your Turn lesson, author Lynne drew a seemingly simple map of her neighborhood. As she came across varying locations to draw on the map, she would quickly write about what memories she ad tied to that location. This activity could potentially be the spring-board for many notebook entries. (Dorfman & Cappelli, 2017)
This week I read two mentor texts for writing personal narratives. Both of these books could be used to introduce the topic of narratives as a whole, or to read before beginning a mini lesson on a writing or brainstorming strategy.
References
Boelts, M., & Castillo, L. (2014). Happy Like Soccer. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2017). Chapter 3: What Are You Really Writing About?: Discovering the Inside Story. In Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6 (2nd ed., pp. 51-76). Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
Medina, M., & Dominguez, A. (2015). Mango, Abuela, and Me. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.
Rosenthal, A. K. (2020). Unit 3: Art. In Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal (pp. 131-150). Penguin Random House.
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