Digging Deeper
From Territories to Small Moment Writing
As a beginning writer myself, I feel like this was such a difficult task to accomplish. I have so much I want to say and write about, but the list gets exhausting and intimidating at times. It's also easy to fall into habit of crossing off an item on your list when you know you could write so much more about this topic. For example, family. I could write all day about my family, but I know as a kid I would've written one story about them and cross it off the list. I am for sure a person who is happy about crossing things off. Writers shouldn't fall into this habit. Writing isn't about crossing topics off a list. This list should never end and that's okay! The use of strategies and modeling can help writers realize this too.
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Each week, I try out all the new strategies that are provided through our own mentor text, Mentor Text by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli. Throughout this blog, I am going to tell my own experience with each of the strategies. Of course these strategies could work well with any writer, but this is just one person's experience, mine!
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When launching the Writer's Notebook, we need to get students excited about writing, especially Narrative Writing. At a young age, kids looooooove talking about themselves. It doesn't fade over time, rather our writing experiences just expand. Starting out, we need students to want to tell their stories. To help spark a narrative writing introduction, Dr. Beth Frye has created a notebook launch for all grade levels. As a future upper grades elementary school teacher, I focused on the 3rd grade up lesson. INSPIRING, MODELING, REPEAT. This is how we get students to feel the fullness of writing. All stories are important stories and we want our writers to feel inspired and comfortable to store all of their life experiences in their notebooks.
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The use of mentor texts to help introduce narrative writing is a great way to model what it looks like. We shouldn't feel afraid that our students are going to take work from other writers. We should feel honored that they are interested in their work enough to want to be just like the writer. This first hint of inspiration will then grow into the young writer to then create their own type of writing.
The fears of finding a topic that you can actually find purpose in writing in. It's a scary task sometimes! This strategies are meant to help you find something that you can write about and have fun with it too. This is my experience:
Drawing and Talking to Find Topics
This was not my favorite strategy, but it could be used to help writers add more details to their writing. I don't think this strategy could be used well to help writers come up with a topic. We are moving the stress of thinking about what to write to the stress of what to draw. The mentor text mentioned in this lesson Right Outside My Window inspired me to think of the swing that my dad created in our backyard. I feel like if I didn't have this guide, I would've struggled to think of something to draw. In order to move writers further, this lesson should include a great mentor text and consistent modeling by the teacher.
Finding Topics from a Memory Chain
A memory chain is a great method for those who may seem stuck because of writer's block. They may have a topic in mind, but not sure what to write about it. It's like a chain of consciousness to get you to think of an idea that you want to write. I did enjoy this strategy because it helps you create such a long list of territories you can write about. It is difficult to think of a specific moment, but it helps form a list to help you go from territories to smaller moments. This is just a first step for students who struggle to think of ideas in the first place.
Lessons adapted from Chapter 2 of: Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature k-6. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
1. Finding a Topic
Once you think of a topic, you got to understand if it's a territory or a small moment. Territories usually look like a single word (i.e. family, dog, summer) while a small moment is more specific to the territory (i.e. the time you and your brother stole from the pantry). These stories carry more meaning and allow for you to write many different stories surrounding the same territory. Here are some strategies to help you find the small moments.
Inverted Triangle***Lesson Plan Included
I love this strategy. It's so simple, yet it's so effective. It could easily be done on the corner of your paper or on the empty page beside where you're about to write. I know personally my heart map and idea list is full of writing territories. That's the first thing you think of when formulating writing ideas. It's hard to think of exact moments that have happened in your past, but you also can't write down the stories that have yet to happen. This strategy doesn't eliminate the hard work students have put into creating their list of writing ideas. It allows them to use this to think further. As you go down the inverted triangle, you are adding more details to the exact same territory you started with. This can be paired on its own or with mentor text. This lesson is specifically paired with the text Rollercoaster by Marla Frazee. This mentor text lesson includes the purpose, modeled example, dialogue, and full lesson outline.
Mac only uses energy a few times a day. The rest of the time he’s sleeping. When he sees his ladybug, this random burst of excitement comes out. He jumps on this little toy and grabs it with his mouth. He shakes this toy violently side to side. The toy takes turns smacking each side of his face. One day during his daily shake, the worst thing happened. As it smacked one side of his face, it POPPED the squeaker right out of the ladybug. The squeaker flew across the room from the couch and bounced off the TV. Mac realized something was wrong. He had to stop his daily shake to see what was wrong. He looked at ladybug, looked at me, looked at the clear squeaker across the room, and back at the empty ladybug. I guess his nap was happening sooner than he planned!
Creating a Hand Map
Sometimes the best way to get specific is to focus on an emotion you felt during a certain time. Emotion fluctuates throughout your day, so this helps students get the focus they need to find a small moment. The use of the hand map is to pinpoint certain times in your life when you have felt a certain emotion. I love this strategy because you are thinking of a specific moment that can lead to a great story. My experience with this was tricky, but effective. There were sometimes that I got stuck on an emotion. For me, I got stuck with happiness. There are so many times that I am happy in my life, unlike anger, fear, sadness and excitement. It felt like happiness was a territory for me because it was such a large topic. There may be a time when a student may feel the same way with one of the emotions. It varies between person, but it's something to consider!
There may be nothing scarier than being awoken by a very loud noise, let alone a very loud noise that you weren't expecting. Every day I have my alarm set for a certain time based on when I have to go to work. Well, sometimes you forget to turn it off when you don't have work. That's exactly what happened to me on Monday morning. One second I was deep asleep loving the fact that I got to sleep in and out of no where !!!!!!!! My alarm went off unexpectedly and at max volume. I could feel a distance from my body leaving the sheets as I jumped out of fear. I'm looking around the room wondering what to do because I just assumed the world was ending. The more I twist and turn, I'm realizing that everything was in fact okay and it was just ducks quacking from my alarm. Safe to say, I did not sleep in that day.
2. Finding the Small Moments
Lessons adapted from Chapter 3 of: Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature k-6. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Small moments are so near and dear to our hearts, but finding the important details to make it powerful is sometimes a challenge. These strategies are helping writers use their own "magnifying lenses" to make their small moments into big stories.
Building Content with Dialogue
Storytelling can be done in many different ways: oral, written, and in this case both! The use of dialogue can help enhance the storytelling experience. It can add details that weren't previously involved and it also adds more personal touches to it. It's meant to add more emotion and narrative to what writers want to show. Something that I think is SO important to tell writers is to not write a script. I have known writers who learn about dialogue and LOVE it, but that's all they want to do. To them it makes sense because they know the story well enough to tell it, but to the reader it gets confusing. We want to introduce dialogue in a way that allows for it to be used for specific moments. It's meant to add excitement and should be used during that moment. In my experience with this strategy, it helped me form new writing ideas. I would think of a funny quote that has happened sometime in my life. I would then use this quote to help tell it's story.
Adding Details Through Questioning
We always ask questions while we are reading to help with comprehension, so why not ask questions while writing? We want the readers to understand what we are writing, so asking questions can help fill those gaps of confusion. I feel like this strategy was difficult for me to do independently. I believe this strategy would be a wonderful fit for peer review between partners. As they read each other their story, they can ask questions to help prompt more details in the story. This is a great way to edit one's paper. This strategy reminded me a lot about Dr. Beth Frye's approach to peer feedback for Writer's Workshop.
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The acronym CARE is a great guide in how writers should help other writers grow on their work.
Compliment
Ask a Question
REcommend
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Asking a question not only helps the writer add detail, it can also help them clarify their purpose for their decisions.
Resource created by Dr. Beth Frye from Appalachian State University
Lessons adapted from Chapter 4 of: Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature k-6. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.