We have been focusing on personal narratives. Your child should be able to tell you that these stories are “absolutely true and all about you.” The children are learning to sustain their attention for longer periods of time (believe it or not they will be writing for an hour by the end of the year). When they can’t think of anything to write about, they can generate ideas by thinking about special people and places in their lives.

We had many entries in our composition book to choose from and have started a rough draft. The children developed timelines that included action, feelings and inner thoughts to include in their story. The focus today was replacing common verbs with stronger verbs. They enjoyed working with a partner to look up verbs  in the Thesaurus.

“Because of Winn Dixie” was a wonderful story to supplement our personal narrative unit. We often referred back to specific examples that we could incorporate into our own writing. The children were encouraged to:

• close their eyes to make a movie in their minds of a small moment
• focus in on exact details and specific moments rather than general sentences
• zoom in on the most important part of the story
• leave out the parts that don’t matter
• story tell the events in their story step-by-step across their fingers
• tell the internal story by including their thoughts feelings and responses
• begin with a strong lead (action, setting, description, dialogue, or thoughts)
• close with a strong ending (action, dialogue, thoughts, images, and whole story reminders that leave a lasting impression)
• reread the story with a partner, look for confusing parts and revise for meaning

We have been reviewing the correct way to use quotation marks in our writing. If you would like to review quotation marks along with other punctuation marks by taking a quick quiz, click on the pictures below: