**Page under construction. Pardon my mess.

For our third, and final short story unit, we're focusing on dialogue. Nothing brings a character to life like listening to what they say, and nothing makes a story flow like engaging dialogue tags. Let's avoid the "he said, she said" game and move our writing forward towards excellence. Likewise, nothing kills a story like poorly-punctuated dialogue and bland dialogue tags.
​

​"So without further adieu," Mr. Karpie orated while stroking his majestically-long quarantine beard, "Let's delve deeply into the depths of developing dialogue," he whispered while clicking the links below with a pointless and annoyingly dramatic flourish of his wrist. 

Week 1: Dialogue Practice

This week, students will focus on learning how to punctuate dialogue properly. We've touched on this in the past, but their second short stories revealed little to no understanding on their part. We'll also identify and practice using effective dialogue tags. Please remember, during quarantine, all lessons and due dates are very flexible. Just try to get all the work done by the end of the week, and DEFINITELY finish all the practice work before starting your third short story.

Lesson Plans

Monday 5/11/2020:
Dialogue Rule Reminders and Forms "Quiz"
During today's lesson, we're going to work on the exact mechanics of punctuating dialogue. It's just the, "you have to know these facts," lesson before we practice applying the rules to actual dialogue. It shouldn't take long, just a quick Slides presentation sharing the information, and then a quick Forms assignment to ensure students read the Slides and learned the dialogue rules. 

Materials
Tuesday 5/12/2020:
​Dialogue Punctuation Practice
Today, we'll take the rules we learned yesterday and apply them to actual dialogue. Using the form to the right, students will read dialogue, and work through a series of scaffolded activities to learn how the rules learned yesterday fit into actual dialogue you might read in an actual story.
Wednesday & Thursday 5/13/2020, & 5/14/2020:
​Intentional Dialogue Tags to Tell the Story
Appropriately-punctuated dialogue is just the first step towards effectively incorporating dialogue into a story. Effective dialogue tags are the next step. In this lesson, we'll look at a Slides presentation about how to write effective dialogue tags, and then use another Form to submit some effective dialogue tags of our own. I've allowed two days for this lesson because it will take some time and effort to graduate out of the, "he said," "she said," dialogue tags that students are used to writing. 
Friday 5/15/2020:
​Plot Structure Chart Reminders and Reasoning
I cannot say enough, or spend enough time and lessons on teaching students that effective stories come down to a delicate balance of a well-chosen conflict, and an intentional climax. These two elements of the plot structure chart are imperative to get right for a story to work well. Imagine what the Lord of the Rings would have been like if we didn't know why Frodo was carrying the ring to Mordor. Imagine if Voldemort was only introduced in book seven of Harry Potter. Imagine if we didn't realize that Rocky Balboa was training to be a boxing champion, or if Mickey hadn't died in the beginning of Rocky III.

Short Stories Writing Project

Now that we've learned how to produce great writing, and we've refined our story ideas together to ensure well-written short stories, it's time to write! This week will be comprised of structure writing days, with a self-assessment protocol so that both teachers and students can track our progress towards finishing our amazing, short stories by Friday.

Story Description

Students will organize and write a 3-5 page short story that effectively  incorporates multiple elements of literature. They can choose any topic they want, whether it's invading aliens or the thrill of a first kiss. The trick will be to advance the action at a step-by-step pace, and to create amazing, high-quality prose.

Success Skills

Intentionally organize and write a narrative text.
[W8.3a, W8.3b, W8.3c, W8.3d, W8.3e]
Produce and revise clear writing that is free of errors.
[W8.4, W8.5, W8.6]

Story Writing Timeline

Day 1

Monday, 5/18/2020

Day 2-5

Tuesday, 5/19/2020 -
​Friday, 5/22/2020
Today, students will complete their plot structure chart graphic organizer for their second story, remembering to include planned elements of suspense and dramatic irony.
These four days are devoted to writing! I STRONGLY recommend spending about 40 minutes each day writing. You will not be able to write an entire story during home base upon your return in April.

Story Materials

Plot Structure Chart Graphic Organizer

Download a copy of this plot structure chart (you probably know it as "the witches hat" if you're under fifteen years old) to organize a creative story.  Don't forget, when writing a story, the plot moves forward step by step, not by giant leaps.

Story Assignment Page with Outline

This is an incredibly basic template created mostly for the purposes of creating a Google Classroom assignment. The top of the story page has a few reminders about the skills and expectations of the short story unit, but really, it's an intentionally blank canvas upon which students can paint with words!

Short Story Rubric

To maintain the integrity of our writing grades and data, I created a new version of the NYS 4-point rubric that is more conducive to assessing the quality of a short story. While the point values are the same, and there is still the general expectation that level three is "at grade level" and level four is "above," everything else has been modified to be short-story specific.

Writing Tools Page

The goal of every successful ELA classroom is to help students develop into the best possible writers that they can become. The tools below are what we use in my classroom to help students on the road to above grade level writing and beyond. 

Reader's / Writer's Workshop

​After all the hard work and dedication that students put into their stories, it seemed a shame to simply grade them on Google Classroom, go over a few exemplars of each grade point, and call it a day. Besides, the point of short stories isn't really to evaluate them, it's to ENJOY READING THEM. This week, we'll start by reading a selection of student-created stories together to model how our readers workshop will function, and how to use a new and unfamiliar tool which could easily go wrong. Then, for the next few days, students will spend some time reading and responding to each other's stories.

Lesson Plans

Materials
Monday 5/25/2020: Proofreading
There are a few, very-easy mistakes that students make over and over again that cause them to lost points on the "command of conventions" portion of our rubric. Sometimes, their basic editing mistakes even make the rest of their writing so difficult to understand that the loss of points spirals into other portions of the rubric. (It's difficult to write effective dialogue without effective punctuation. Even the best "showing" descriptions are virtually unintelligible when students don't use a single punctuation mark in an entire page of writing.) Today, students will read their own stories and apply the "editing checklist" linked to the right. 
Tuesday & Wednesday, 5/26/2020 & 5/27/2020: Self Evaluation
On these two days, students will self evaluate their stories (only because we're all at home, and there is no way to peer review our stories together.
Thursday and Friday, 5/28/2020 & 5/29/2020: Reader's Workshop
​Students will spend the entirety of today's class in silence. They'll be nestled deeply in the tomes of their classmate's writing. They'll respond to the writing using the methods we modelled and practiced yesterday. 
Proudly powered by Weebly