Revising

Our authors have been hard at work revising their writing pieces. So far, they have used the 6 Traits writing rubric to assess their pieces. Using the rubric as a guide, they decide on areas that they think they need to improve on. As a whole class, we talked about the organization of writing, and specifically, different leads to stories. We discussed how other authors use leads to capture the attention of their audience. Our favorite was from Matilda by Roald Dahl.

"It's a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful."

This opening line was definitely the beginning of a story we wanted to read more of. We also discussed how authors start with dialogue or just jump right into action. The children then went back to their pieces to write alternate leads.

As a class we have also been working on the trait of conventions with their spelling work and learning about dialogue punctuation (because we love to write with lots of dialogue). Here is a conversation that we had on the rug, which we used to model dialogue punctuation. The children all have a copy of this in their language arts folder as a resource.
   "When I was little I had a kitten and I tried to put it on my head. It slipped and was hanging by my earring," said Cynthia.
    Roger replied, "That must have hurt."
    "Why would you think that?" Cynthia asked.
    "Because it sounds painful!" Karenna interrupted.
    Cynthia retorted, "It was pretty painful, but luckily I had a grabby thingy."
    "A grabby thingy?" Ms. Byrne asked, "I don't get it."
    "Well, then why did you ask me that question if you said that it was painful?" Roger asked Cynthia with anger in his voice.
    "I know I said that it was painful, and it was."

What we learned:
You don't always have to repeat who said something.
Can use one "Ms. Byrne asked" and continue your sentence.
Everyone who talks gets their own paragraph.
Tab (indent) before you start a paragraph.
You have to put a comma in between your quotation and the rest of your sentence, unless you have an ! or ? 

Posted on October 17, 2008 8:36 AM | Permalink