Hello Parents

Below are the teaching points for our current Writer’s Workshop Unit titled “Raising the Quality of Narrative Writing.” By now you have seen your child’s first personal narrative for the school year and I hope you have had a chance to give them some feedback. It is important that your child knows we all have their best interests at heart and just want them to reach their full potential as writers this year. All of us have stories to tell, it is time for your child to tell some of them on paper, and tell them well.

Now that we have started the second narrative for the year, the hope is that the student’s will take the advice and constructive criticism received from peers, family and myself, and together with the following teaching points, their next narrative will be of a higher standard than their first. The idea of the Writer’s Workshop Units of Study is for the students to constantly build on their skills, adding more ‘tools’ to their ‘tool-kit’ as they grow as writers. Today we completed Lesson 3, ask your child about what feelings and emotions they wrote about today; or about yesterday’s lessons on first times, last times, and important times.

Raising the Quality of Narrative Writing

1. Writers make their writing POWERFUL by emulating writing they admire.

2. Writers use the strategies they know and think about FIRST times, LAST times and IMPORTANT times to generate IDEAS for their PERSONAL NARRATIVES.

3. WRITERS choose a STRONG feeling then they write about a time they felt the feeling.

4. WRITERS set goals and review what they’ve learned to improve on their writing.

5. WRITERS ARE STRONG LISTENERS WHO CAN FIND IDEAS IN THEIR OWN.OTHER’S SEED ENTRIES.

6. Writers ask “what is my story really about?”

7. WRITERS USE MENTOR TEXTS TO GUIDE THEM AS THEY DRAFT AND REVISE THEIR LEADS.

8. Writers write from the narrator’s P.O.V.

9. Writers can strengthen their PERSONAL NARRATIVES by highlighting the CONNECTION between EXTERNAL ACTIONS &INTERNAL RESPONSES.

10. WRITERS use scenes from the PAST or FUTURE to bring out the INTERNAL STORY AND ADD POWER TO THEIR NARRATIVES.

11. Writers revise their NARRATIVES to bring out the STORY STRUCTURE.

12. WRITERS DON’T JUST “END STORIES”…they LEARN LESSONS, they SOLVE PROBLEMS AND MAKE CHANGES to end them EFFECTIVELY.

13. WRITERS USE PUNCTUATION & COMMAS IN PARTICULAR TO MAKE THEIR WRITING MORE EXACT.