Focus Lesson Planning Sheet

Focus Writing From Inside a Memory (grades 3-5) Lesson (adapted from Calkins and Martinelli, 2006) Topic Qualities of Good Personal Narrative (from previous Materials lesson) Chart paper Episode from your own life that you can demonstrate reliving (from inside your memory) Episode the class can relive together (from inside their collective memory) Previously begun personal narratives Writer’s Notebooks or paper Over the past few days we have talked about some of the qualities Connection of good personal narrative writing (refer to anchor chart). One of the most important qualities is that the structure of this kind of writing follows a story. We have practiced telling our stories to each other orally. Today we are going to discuss a way to help us tell and write our stories better.

Explicit We have discussed the difference between just telling about a topic and actually building the story step-by-step and telling it as a story. Instruction Remember these examples:

Anchor Chart: I knelt down under the tree with my grandma. She handed me the Qualities of Good small, onion-shaped daffodil bulb. It felt crinkly in my hand. “Is this Personal Narrative -Write a little seed story; a good place for the first one?” I asked. don’t write all about a Remember we said that this is how story writing sounds. giant watermelon topic -Zoom in so you tell the most important parts of But if I said it this way: I planted bulbs with my grandmother. It the story was fun. We planted daffodil bulbs. She showed me where to plant -Include true, exact details from the movie them so a deer can’t dig them up. you have in your mind I’m only telling about what happened, but it doesn’t tell the story of -Build the story step-by- what happened. step; don’t just summarize Well in order to build their stories step-by-step so they really sound Add: like stories, writers use the strategy of going back into their -Go back in your memory and relive the episode as memories and seeing the story happening again just like it did the you write it first time. They relive their memories and take themselves back to those episodes from their lives. When I want to write a personal narrative story, I can use this same strategy. I close my eyes and try to put myself back in that time. If it is a moment from my life that really matters to me, it should be clear in my memory so that I can relive the episode and see it happening all over again.

Watch me go back in my memory so that I can build the story I want to tell:

Use an example from your own life of a memory that you can demonstrate reliving. Describe what you were doing when the episode first starts. Discuss your feelings, etc. Then write the first sentence or so of how your story would begin. Then close your eyes again and describe the next thing you see as you relive the memory. Demonstrate how you might not remember the exact words that were spoken or exactly some small detail, but that you remember so much of the important parts of the episode that you can fill in the “cloudy” parts of your memory with what you think belong in that memory.

Guided Let’s try doing this together. Remember when (choose an example the whole class would remember, for example, a fire drill, a field trip Practice or a class visitor). Now everyone close their eyes and imagine seeing that happen all over again. Relive the episode from inside your memory. What do you see first? Discuss and start a story based on response. Close your eyes and go back into the memory. What happened next? Repeat once or twice more.

Send Off [for So from now on, when you are working on your personal narratives, the true stories from your own life, remember that it is really Independent important to build them step-by-step and a really great strategy to Practice] do that is to back into your memory and relive the episode so that you can see it happening all over again. When writers write from inside their memories, their stories are built step-by-step and sound like stories should.

Group Share Students can share how they built their stories step-by-step by writing from inside a memory.