4th Grade: Writing Workshop - Narrative

[Pages:11]4th Grade: Writing Workshop - Narrative

Unit Planning Guide

Unit Title: Personal Narrative Writing Unit Focused Subject Areas: Reading, Writing, Communication Grade: Fourth

Created By: Dr. Amy Condon and Dr. Linda Mook

Enduring Understandings: ? Personal narratives are a form of non-fiction writing that tells a story ? All writing has a beginning, middle and end

Essential Questions: ? How does retelling the sequence of major events help me understand what I read? ? How do writers use narrative writing to make sense of personal experiences? ? How do authors' language and words, phrases, conventions, and illustrations affect our understandings of text meanings? ? How do the beginning and the ending describe the structure of a narrative text? ? How does dialogue help a reader understand the story?

Duration: 5-6 weeks

Stage 1 What do we want students to know? *Study the standards: *List standards (See Daily Lessons) *List other content standards to be embedded (See Daily Lessons)

Factual Knowledge Students will know: 1. A narrative writing is a story with a beginning, middle and end. 2. Narratives may be fiction or non- fiction and usually tell about an important event in the character's life. Personal narratives are non-ficiton and tell about a small moment in a person's life.

Procedural Knowledge Students will be able to: 1. Explain how the author's choice of words, illustrations and conventions combine to create mood, contribute to meaning, and emphasize aspects of a character or setting. ( 4.RL.9.2) 2. Determine characteristics of crafted text structures and describe why an author uses this structure. (4.RL.12.2)

Conceptual Knowledge Students will understand:

3. Narrative stories use the structural form of seesaw, diary, circular, photographs poetry texts, texts with short memoirs, an inanimate voice or a framing question. Each structure has a different intent for usage.

3. Determine how the author uses words and phrases to inform, explain, or describe. (4. RI.8.1)

4. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective techniques, wellchosen details, and well-structured event sequences (4.W.3.1)

5. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. ( 4.W.4)

6. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English form and use the progressive verb tenses. (4.W.5)

7. Write independently, legibly, and routinely for a variety of tasks, purposes, and audiences over short and extended time frames. (4.W.6)

8. Interact with others to explore ideas and concepts, communicate meaning, and develop logical interpretations through collaborative conversations; build upon the ideas of others to clearly express one's own views while respecting diverse perspectives.(4.C.1)

Stage 2 How will we know that students understand what has been taught and what should they be able to do? *Daily Assessments *Create Common Assessments *Determine expectations and levels of proficiency

Projects, Research, etc.

Unit Pre-Assessment: Students will write a personal narrative. A personal narrative is a true story about something that really happened to you. Students can refer back to their brainstorming sheet that they created at the beginning of writer's workshop to help them with ideas. Do not take a grade on this pre

assessment but do score it against the end of unit rubric. This information will help you as the teacher focus on areas of strength and weakness for each student during conferencing and mini lessons.

Extensions:

Differentiation Considerations: 1. Some students may need more frequent conferencing. 2. Allow students to have access to word banks or spell checks if they need it.

Stage 3 What daily instructional strategies, activities, and resources will be used to facilitate student learning? *Instructional Strategies *Literature/Multimedia Resources *Materials *Professional Resources *Field Studies/Speakers

Strategies List possible things: Procedural Mini Lessons, Modeling, Anchor Charts for writing

Gradual Release model of "I do, We do, You do" is preferred for this unit

Turn and Talk is a valuable strategy to use during writing workshop. Use turn and talk when reading narrative mentor texts aloud to students. You can ask some of these questions to help spark student thinking:

? Where do you think the author got his/her ideas for this book? ? Listen to this! Let me reread the beginning of this book. Did the lead make you want to read the story? ? Did you hear any words that you want to remember and use in your writing? ? Can you picture this character/setting/event in your mind? How did the author help you do that? What

words did the author use? ? Notice the way the sentence flows. How do you think the author did that? ? Does this writing have voice?

Key Vocabulary: sequence, details, events, narrative, closure, concludes, ending, action, senses, dialogue, transition, memory, emotions, lead, paragraph

transition words ? first, first of all, in the beginning, to begin with, next, then later, afterwards, eventually, finally, in the end, last

Text Structures From 2nd Grade: Seesaw text structure ? predictable balance of information that moves back and forth between chunks that work together in some way

Diary text structure ? a book or journal where an individual keeps a record of their events, feelings and experiences

Circular Text structure- cycles through the story one event at a time to end back where the story originated; some are written in narrative style, while some are expository;

Text Structures from 3rd Grade:

Photo-Poetry Texts: Texts written as a series of poems that accompany photographs which interest them. Usually the photos are connected to a central idea, making the collection thematic rather than random (Ray, 1999).

Photo-Narratives: Texts written in this way are fashioned to sound like someone is showing the reader a photo album and narrating the story of each picture. As each new page is turned and a new photo or picture is revealed, it is accompanied by narration.

Series of Short Memoirs: A series of short memoir pieces can each stand alone as single narrative units. The short pieces appear essentially without transitions between them, just as a collection of short stories would be assembled, with titles between each story. The difference in the structure of a short story collection and in this memoir structure, however, is that characters, settings, and some plots travel across the stories as they are written to illuminate a specific life. (Ray, 1999).

Inanimate Voice Text: In this way of writing a text, an inanimate "character" has the speaking role that narrates the text. The decision to fashion a text in this way allows the writer to shift readers' attention to an unusual, unexpected perspective. The effect is surprising because it truly "brings to life" something that is lifeless, something that we do not expect to speak.

Framing Question Text: Text structure writers work off of using a central question at the beginning of the text and then making the rest of the text a series of responses to that question. The main body of the text is written as a succession of responses, all of which answer the question in another way, revealing another Revised August 23, 2017 44 facet of the information, description, or storyline being presented. Often, the responses will include the repetition of key words from the framing question (Ray, 1999).

**** the fourth grade standard requires that students are able to describe characteristics of these text structures and why the author uses the respective text structure. Be sure to include a variety of text structure selections in your read alouds.

Mentor Text Resources

Personal Narratives: *My Five Senses ? Aliki *The Moon and I- Betsy Byars *I'm the Big Sister Now ? Michelle Emmert *When I was Nine ? James Stevenson *A Chair for My Mother - Vera Williams *Today I Feel Silly ? Jamie Lee Curtis

Diary Text Structure: *Diary of a Worm and Diary of a Spider ? Doreen Cronin *Diary of a Wombat ? Jackie French *Diary of a Wimpy Kid ?

Seesaw Text Structure: *Someday - Eileen Spinelli *When I was Little: A Four Year Old's Memoir of her Youth - Jamie Lee Curtis *I am the Dog, I am the Cat ?Donald Hall *Rosie and Michael ? Judith Viorst *Grandad Bill's Song ? Jane Yolen *That's Good!That's Bad! ? Margery Cuyler *Fortunately ? Remy Charlip *My Mom Travels a Lot ? Caroline Fellar Bauer *Tough Boris ? Mem Fox *The Mitten ? Jan Brett *The Hat ? Jan Brett * Lost Paul ? Brett Johnson and Celeste Lewis *Do Cowboys Ride Bikes?- Kathy Tucker *Our Granny ? Margaret Wild

Circular Texts: *The Trip back Home ? Janet Wong *The Relatives Came ? Cynthia Rylant *Where the Wild Things Are ? Maurice Sendak *The Ox-Cart Man ? Donald Hall *Ms. Berlin Walks ? Jane Yolen *The Night Pirates ? Peter Harris *My Friend Rabbit ? Eric Rohmanno *A South African Night ? Rachel Isadora *Magic Tree House Series ? Jane Pope Osbourne *Grandpa Never Lies- Ralph Fletcher *If you Give a Mouse a Cookie ? Laura Joffe Numeroff *A Butterfly is Patient ? Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long

Flying Deep- Climb Inside Seep-Sea Submersible ALVIN by Michelle Cusolito and Nicole Wong *Red-Eyed Tree Frog - Joy Cowley

Photo-Poetry: *Brown Angels by Walter Dean Myers *Something Permanent by Cynthia Rylant and Walker Evans *Water Music by Jane Yolen

Photo-Narrative: *Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff *Snapshots from the Wedding by Gary Soto

Short Memoirs: *Childtimes by Eloise Greenfield * Walking the Log: Memories of a Southern Childhood by Bessie Nickens *House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Inanimate Voice Text: *Cry Me a River by Rodney McRae * Mojave by Diane Seibert *Water Dance by Thomas Locker *North Country Spring by Reeve Lindbergh

Framing Question Text: * The Moon Was the Best by Charlotte Zolotow * I Want to Be by Thylias Moss * The Other Way to Listen by Byrd Baylor and Peter Parnell * The Seashore Book by Charlotte Zolotow * Cat's Colors by Jane Cabrera * Momma, Where are You From? By Marie Bradby

Strong Leads: *Thunder Cake *BIGMAMA"S *Shortcut by Donald Crews *Crash by Jerry Spinelli (flashback) * On my Honor by Marion Dana Bauer (dialogue) *The Tail of Emily Windsnap by Liz Kessler ( question) *Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos ( action) *The Lemonade War by Jacqueline Davies ( onomatopoeia)

Strong Endings:

Professional Resources:

South Carolina State Standards, SC Dept of Education The Writing Strategies Book by Jennifer Seravallo What You Know By Heart by Katie Wood Ray Fourth Grade Standards Support Document, Rock Hill, SC School District, 2017

Day 1: Pre- assessment ( see below for lesson plan sample) *Use school, district or state determined rubric for scoring

Stage 4

Daily Lesson Plans

Will be reflected weekly

Day 2: Review: What is a personal narrative? How is it different from other types of writing? * Show various texts that are personal narratives Mini lesson: Generating a Story Idea from a memory

? Creating a graphic organizer to generate ideas

Day 4: Generating a story idea from emotion

? Read a mentor text that showcases strong emotion;

? Create a list of emotions on an anchor chart and have students describe times when they felt those emotions

Day 4: Generating a story idea

? Read a mentor text that showcases strong emotion; generate story ideas based on emotions

Day 5: Narrowing down to a Small Moment or Seed idea from graphic organizer and emotions list

Watermelon: Trip to the state fair Slice: going on the rides Seed: how you felt going on the roller coaster

Moving from big idea "Watermelon " to small moment "seed"

Day 6: Rehearsing story with a partner; creating first draft

? These are great conference days to set goals

Day 7: Rehearsing story with a second partner; add details to first draft

? These are great conference days to set goals

Day 8: Writing a lead; reread mentor texts read in days 2-5; look at leads;

? Discuss three possible types of leads ? start with a sound, start with a question, start with an action

Day 9: Adding Dialogue to a story

Day 10: Adding Dialogue to a story

Read a mentor text that has many examples of dialogue

? look for places in story to add dialogue with a partner

Read another mentor text that showcases dialogue

? Review with partner where dialogue was added yesterday

Day 11: Punctuating Dialogue

? Tag at end of dialogue

Day 12: Punctuating Dialogue

? Tag at beginning of dialogue

? Develop several possible leads

? Choose one to use in story

Day 13: Punctuating Dialogue

? Editing dialgoue

Day 16: Show; Don't Tell

? refer to mentor texts that utilize the senses to describe what is happening

? add sensory details to writing ( feel like, sound like, look like, etc)

Day 17: Transition Words

? Transition words help readers understand the order of events in a story

? Refer to mentor texts for examples Students look for places in writing where they have used transition words or where they need to use transition words

Day 18: Paragraphs

? Add dialogue to writing

? Edit dialogue in writing

Day 14: Adding Details

? Review mentor texts; look for adjectives; discuss how that changes the story

? students add details to their stories to help readers see the events more clearly

? highlight nouns that can have more information added to them ( adjectives

Day 19: Writing an ending

? Refer to several mentor texts that have different ways to end a story

? Students create 2-3 possible endings

? Work with partner to select one to use

Day 15: Word Choice

? work with partners to look for places where "boring words" were used and replace with "interesting words"

Day 20: Editing

? Good writers edit their work; share with students and editing checklist

? Work with a partner to begin editing writing

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