Lucy Calkins: Revising Endings



Lucy Calkins: Revising Endings

Date: October 29, 2010

Objective of Today’s Lesson: Revising endings: Learning from published writing. I want students to be able to improve their story endings to make them more grabbing to readers and more detailed.

Rationale: I will teach students that writers deliberately craft the endings of their stories. This is important to learn because you need a solid ending to be able to write great stories. If you can write great stories it will help you in writing essays to get into college and throughout your college career. I’ll show students how to learn techniques for improving their own work by studying published writing.

Materials & supplies needed: Chart paper, markers, students writing notebooks, sample endings of published books. | |

|Procedures and approximate time allocated for each event |Academic, Social and Linguistic Support during|

| |each event for my focus students: |

|Introduction | |

|Remind students of when we worked on leads into our stories and how important leads are. | |

|Teaching Point is to teach students that authors craft not only beginnings, but also endings | |

|that have an effect on the reader. If you can write great endings this could make you story go| |

|from ordinary to extraordinary. The earlier all of you learn how to improve you writings the | |

|more it will help you in your future. In order to get into most colleges you will need to | |

|write an essay. Hopefully by that time you will have all mastered all of these ideas we are | |

|teaching you now. We want you to get as much practice with all of these ideas as possible so | |

|when it comes to the time that you have to sit down and write that essay it will be no problem!| |

|Writers work just as hard, maybe even harder on our endings. I will show you a few samples of | |

|how endings are powerful. | |

|(5 minutes) | |

| | |

|Outline | |

|Read sample ending to students by Julie Brinkckloe. | |

|Re-read this ending again and this time think out loud to the class while doing so. Guide on | |

|p. 95 of the points I need to hit while thinking out loud. | |

|Point out and write “Important Actions” on chart paper. | |

|Point out the “Important Dialogue” and also add this to the list. | |

|Talk about how the last sentence “Reminds us of the Whole Story” and add this to our list. | |

|I read this ending several times and studied it closely to see what the author did to make her | |

|ending powerful. | |

|(10 minutes) | |

| | |

|Closing | |

|What have we learned today? [We have learned that endings are very crucial and important to | |

|your writing. Without a good ending it can make all the hard work you have done within the | |

|rest of the story just ordinary. We have learned how to put dialogue, images, and short | |

|reminders into our endings make it more powerful.] | |

|How will this help us in our writing? [This will help all of us make our writings great! | |

|Having a great ending can make the difference between having an ordinary story or an | |

|extraordinary story. A good story needs a good ending.] | |

|You want to make the readers feel what the characters are feeling in the writing. | |

|Pick an emotion that you want to show in your writing. If the character in the story is sad | |

|because their dog died. Make the reader feel sad too. Make the reader feel like they are | |

|apart of the story. Just like the readers dog died too. | |

|I want you to think about how you can study your endings and make them more powerful. | |

|Go back to your seats and mark any important actions, words, and images in your story that you | |

|can possibly be woven into your new ending that is going to be powerful! | |

|After you find the few words you still want to use re-write you ending. | |

|(5- 10 minutes) | |

| | |

| | |

| |- I want this student to understand what |

| |adding more power to an ending means. I don’t|

| |expect him to remember all of the ways and |

| |examples of how you can make your ending |

| |powerful. I do want him to be able to |

| |identify a powerful ending from a vague/boring|

| |ending. |

|Assessment |Academic, Social, and Linguistic |

|I will gauge the students learning as I implement my lesson by randomly drawing sticks as we |I will be looking for this student to at least|

|talk about how to make powerful endings. I will ask questions about how we can identify |be attempting to add detail or feeling to |

|powerful endings and also how we can make our endings more powerful. The student’s sticks I |their ending. I also would like to see this |

|draw will have to give me one idea about improving endings. |student at least pick out one word from their |

| |writing that he can draw upon to start |

|I will be walking around while students are working on their endings. Specifically, I want to |revising his ending. |

|see students making improvements to their endings and adding details that will improve their | |

|writings. | |

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