The One With The Surprise

Hi, friend! I’m so glad that you’ve joined me on the blog today because I have the most exciting ideas to share about how I used an event from my own life this past week (my brother’s surprise birthday party) to demonstrate several of the skills that we studied in our readings. My family and I had the BEST time celebrating our favorite dude this weekend, and I’m clearly just not quite ready to be over it all yet.

Growing a Narrative from Beginning to End

In this week’s chapter reading of Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-6, Dorfman and Cappelli identify the importance of expanding students’ narrative writing through the use of beginning, middle, and end. They open this discussion by specifically naming the parts of a story that should be included in each section. For instance, Dorfman and Cappelli claim that “Traditionally, when a story is mapped, the beginning includes the characters, the setting, and the problem or goal” (2017, p. 116). This is often followed by the middle of the story which includes a description of how the characters work to solve the problem or reach the given goal. Finally, a story’s ending ties all of the story elements together including the problem’s solution or the achievement of a goal. To conclude their description, Dorfman and Cappelli address the question, “So what is the most important thing the reader needs to know at the end of the story?” to which one student discovers a sufficient ending can only occur if it relates “to the beginning of the story and the problem of the main character” (2017, p.116).

This particular structure of growing a narrative reminded me of a graphic that I used while tutoring a few summers ago. The child I was working with responded well to graphics and visual representations of ideas, so I came across this idea while looking for a way to help her diagnose the beginning, middle, and ending parts of the stories that we were reading. Unfortunately, I found the original idea on Pinterest, so I have no way of identifying the original creator. Regardless, the initial idea required few adaptations to effectively include the qualities that Dorfman and Cappelli had mentioned in their text. You can check out my “Retell Roller Coaster” below.

I used this graphic to draft my own ideas in my writer’s notebook about my brother’s surprise party this past weekend. The graphic encouraged me to consider all of the events leading up to the surprise which allowed me to expand my narrative writing beyond just the event of the surprise party. You can check out my planning map here.

How do children learn to become better writers through the use of mentor texts? How are you learning to become a better writer though the use of mentor texts?

The first thing you should know, before I begin answering this question, is how much I believe in using mentor texts in the classroom. Actually no, I don’t believe in it- I LOVE it. I’ve always loved reading, but being a graduate student has really instilled an understanding in me that mentor texts make absolutely everything better in the classroom. They offer a way to learn more about the world, each other, as well as ourselves…. and is there really anything more important?

Because of this belief, I second Dorfman and Cappelli’s statement that authors of mentor texts can “become our coaches and our partners as we bring the joy of writing to our students” (2017, p. 7). When we expose children to quality mentor texts, we are providing them with examples of strategies and practices that they can implement in their own writing. In order to do this though, we must first structure their understanding of these techniques. Craft Moves: Lesson Sets for Teaching Writing with Mentor Texts by Stacey Shubitz offers an extensive list of the strategies that author Maribeth Boelts uses in the mentor text Happy Like Soccer. Included on this list are strategies such as “comparing and contrasting”, “show don’t tell”, and “the power of three”. I read Happy Like Soccer prior to reading Shubitz’s Craft Moves, so I wound up adding sticky notes of references to Boelts’ strategies as I returned to the text with Shubitz’s guidance.

I realized, as I did this, that I would use a similar process with the students in my own classroom for identifying writing strategies in mentor texts. My proposed process is as follows:

First, I would read the given mentor text with my students all the way through just as I would any given text in the classroom (i.e. noting the endpapers and the dedication, pausing for predictions, checking for comprehension, etc.).

Second, during my writing block, I would explain to my students that we were going to revisit our mentor text by “reading like a writer”. I would elaborate that “reading like a writer” means that we are going to be on the lookout for strategies that the writer uses to make the story more intriguing for the reader.

While re-reading the mentor text, I would encourage students to share times when they feel “pulled in” by the author’s writing. I would model an example of this through a think aloud myself among the first pages of the book. As my students and I identify places that the author has “pulled us into” the story, we will conduct conversations about why we feel that way and how the author achieved that feeling. Together, we will then identify the strategy that the author used by giving it a name. I will write the name of this strategy on a sticky note and place it directly on the page that we have discussed. I will also include the name and description of this strategy on an anchor chart of “Writer’s Strategies” for my students to refer to, as needed, while doing their own writing. Check out some pages from my own “sticky noted strategies” copy of Happy Like Soccer below.

*A Note To Fellow Teachers: While Shubitz’s list of strategies in craft moves is extensive (and a helpful starting point for teachers), I would give my students the freedom to identify and name the strategies that they find. By doing this, I believe that it will allow us to take ownership of the list of strategies that we develop together and more readily use these strategies in our own writing.*

Finally, we will begin to incorporate these strategies into our own writing and writer’s notebooks. This part of the lesson may or may not occur on the same day as our mentor text dissection. I will use the Gradual Release of Responsibility to first model utilizing a given strategy in my own writing, and then, encourage my writers to try it on their own. We will only work to incorporate a single strategy at a time, emphasizing Shubitz’s point that writers should use details with caution so as not to overdo it (2016, p.63). Below is an excerpt from my own writer’s notebook this week where I used three of Boelts’ strategies to create an effective lead and bridging paragraph.

It is my belief that by modeling the writing in my classroom after the exemplars of published writers, both I and my students will be able to improve on our own abilities to craft narrative pieces that pull readers in and leave them enthusiastic to continue.

So, there it is. My two big takeaways from this week’s study on narrative writing. I hope that you find these ideas helpful as you think about narrative writing in your own classroom, and how to get the most out of your students’ narrative writing experience. For more information on the topics covered, I would suggest investigating the resources below.

Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature, K-6. (2nd ed). United States: Stenhouse Publishers.

Shubitz, S. (2016). Craft moves: Lesson sets for teaching writing using mentor texts. United States: Stenhouse Publishers.