Teaching Project Proposal - Descriptive Writing

Topics:  

Descriptive Writing and Mentor texts

For the Teaching Project, I would like to propose working with descriptive writing and mentor texts.  Descriptive writing is vital for all styles of writing.  As my seniors continue with their research work this semester, I find that many of them have forgotten the work they did last semester on different writing strategies, most importantly, and tragically, descriptive writing.  I find that their leads are lacking energy and their paragraphs are missing any life-giving description. I would like to work with mentor texts and examples to show the importance of descriptive writing in different genres.

Resources:

I am currently looking at using the following craft lessons from the texts for this course:

from Georgia Heard's Finding the Heart of Nonfiction: Teaching 7 Essential Craft Tools with Mentor Texts (2013):

Writing with Imagery (pp. 51-59) and Precise Language (pp. 76-94)

• Turning facts into scenes (p. 59)
• Sensory Words (p. 77)
• Concrete Nouns and Active Verbs (pp. 80-81)
• Avoiding weak word construction (p. 82)
• Using Figurative Language (p. 85)

from Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi's Craft Lessons:  Teaching Writing K-8 (2007):

Details and Imagery

• Using sensory details (p. 62)

Setting

• Using details to describe setting (p. 43)

from Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi's Nonfiction Craft Lessons:  Teaching Information Writing K-8 (2001):

Description

• Describing your subject (pp. 61, 89)

from Jeff Anderson's 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know (2011):

Models

• Using Mentor Texts (pp. 23-40)

Details

• Selecting the Concrete and Necessary (pp. 61-78)

Note:  I will also use mentor texts that I have not selected yet.

Goals:

Some of the learning goals for this project are:

• deepening my understanding of the importance of descriptive writing;
• enhancing different styles of writing with description;
• using figurative language to improve description; 
• elevating writing through the use of mentor texts; and
• teaching writers how to "show" instead of "tell".

Format:

Although I love this blogging format and I am a huge fan of Jing, I have never tried to do audio and slide recording on PowerPoint.  Our technology guru at the school tells me that it is easy technology that I will learn it quickly (We'll see about that!).  I would like to try this format for this project, so I intend to use PowerPoint for my final project.

Questions:

I don't find myself with any questions at this point other than:  Am I on the right track with this assignment?  

Final Portfolio: Narrative Writing

Pocket 1: Prewriting

Writer's Note:  I decided to do this portfolio on personal narrative because I wanted to create a possible mentor text for my students for an assignment that I already use in my composition class.  Here is the original assignment:





Writer's Note:  I wanted to fulfill my assignment and meet some of the challenges my students face when doing this writing.  I started by going to Mindmondo.com and creating a mind map of topics I could use to write a personal narrative.  I find that this is a wonderful tool to use for thought organization.  It is an excellent visual of my thought process.  Here is my mind map:

Writer's Note:  It is obvious that I spent more time on some and less on others.  I always tell my students that this is a clear sign that some topics are more important to them than others.  I try to point out that this is an important part of prewriting.

Writer's Note:  Georgia Heard (2013) recommends that writers students try to "distill information into a six-word memoir" (p. 45).  I wanted to try this, so I chose a few of my topics and gave it a shot.  Here are the results:

Writer's Notes:  Heard also explains that asking questions can help writers focus their information.  Asking Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How questions can help form a direction for a personal narrative.  I then decided to use the prewriting assignment that I gave my students earlier this year.

Writer's Notes:  One frustration that I have always had with the prewriting assignment for this essay is the lack of information students write in their prewriting.  It seems that getting 25 items is simply too much to ask.  (Now, I have never done this assignment with them, so I have not shown them a true example of what I am asking for.  Now that I have done the assignment, I can show them what it could look like.)

Pocket 2: Drafting, Crafting, and Revising

Writer's Notes:  I really wanted to spend some focus on writing leads for this assignment.  When I talk to my students about leads, I always call them grabbers.  One of my favorite leads comes from the hauntingly beautiful novel, The Kite Runner, written by Khaled Hosseini (2003).  In Hosseini's opening chapter he hints about an incident that changed his life.  It is obvious that this was something terrible, but the full impact isn't given until later in the novel.

Writer's Note:  Parroting Hosseini's style, I wrote the following to go along with my first prewriting idea for the accident I was in with my family when I was a kid.

Writer's Note: This was pretty dark.  Even though I would be sharing it with seniors, I wasn't sure that I wanted to use this moment.  (I really don't want to encourage every student to write about the worst experience they have ever had!)  I decided to try again with another of my prewriting topics.

Writer's Note:  This was better.  Something I could use and show my students how I used Hosseini's words to help me form my own passage.  Once I decided which piece I was going to work with, I was able to focus on the skills that would help me finish this personal narrative, and I was able to finish my writing target sheet.

Writer's Note:  At this point I felt that I was ready to write my first draft.  Because I knew this was going to be a longer piece, I decided to do my rough draft on the computer.  Here is my first attempt (I used my six-word memoir as the title):

 


Writer's Notes:  In Mentor Author, Mentor Texts, Fletcher (2011) wrote about a disturbing incident from his past.  The court incident is one of the most disturbing incidents I have faced in my recent past.  Fletcher mentioned interviewing people who were on the bus with him, so I decided to talk to my husband about his memories of the day.  One thing that stood out for me in my discussion with him was that he said he wouldn't have believed my story if he hadn't been there.  It seems too far-fetched.  Who would put a middle-aged English teacher with no prior record (not even a speeding ticket) in jail for running a stop sign?  Rereading my first draft, I get that same sense of unreality.  Even my family didn't believe the tale.  How can I make it sound like it isn't being told from the words of an over-reacting, hysterical female?  I will have to work on this in the revisions.

Additionally, I want to work on using dialogue and precise language in my writing.  When I teach narration to my seniors, one text that I love to use is Langston Hughes's Salvation.  Hughes is a master at precise language and dialogue.  Here is an example that I used as a mentor text for writing this piece:

Writer's Note:  I then decided to use Lehman's (2011) ideas and make revision notes on my rough draft.

Writer's Note:  With this in mind, along with my target goals, I dove in to the revision of this piece.   I had decided that I would keep my seniors in mind as my audience, and I was trying to use displaying narrative skills as my purpose.  This helped me in choosing the parts to change.  I was amazed at how much time it took to revise my own work.  I was far more critical of my own writing than I would be of my students.

Writer's Note:  If you look back at my original assignment, you will see that there is one glaring problem with my finished narrative:  It's too long.  I have had students complain in the past about the the assignment being too short; I will have to reconsider my perimeters for next year.

Pocket 3:  Editing and Publishing

Writer's Note:  There are several editing decisions that I made in the publication of this piece.  The main aspects of editing have been put in pocket 2 under revising.  You can see there the decisions I made while revising my work.  What stands out more to me are the changes I decided not to make.  When I teach students narration, I caution them about the use of first person pronouns.  Of course a personal narration is written in first person, but that doesn't mean that a writer needs to start every paragraph with a first person pronoun.  On the third page of my piece, I start four paragraphs with "I".  I tried to change them, but they lost meaning to me when I did.  This is an important discovery for me; perhaps I need to take this into consideration when I grade my students' work.

Choosing how to publish this piece was difficult for me.  It is just too personal.  I didn't want to make it flowery or hide my words behind a picture like I did with my last pieces.  My husband had taken some pictures of our car after it had been towed out of the ditch.  I thought using those would set a tone for the piece.  I also wanted to create a bit of intrigue to get people to want to read my piece.  Hence my word selection for the caption.  I hesitated to put a picture of someone in jail at the end, but it is so true to the helplessness I felt in court.

Here is my published piece:

Pocket 4:  Teaching

Note One:  Lesson Idea

There are many mentor texts that I could have used to work on this.  I chose The Kite Runner and Salvation.  Here are a few other texts I could have used:

Coming to an Awareness of Language by Malcom X
Black Men in Public Space by Brent Staples
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
Goodbye, Hunting by John Bowe
A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (This could also spark some interesting conversation about whether remembering things wrong is really creating fiction.)
On the Back of the Bus by Ralph Fletcher
A Link to the Living by Patsy Garlan

I have been looking at using literature circles with some of my classes.  I could form a lesson using some of the essays mentioned above to have students analyze and discuss what are the most successful strategies for writing narration.  Students could then create their own Target Skills Sheets.

How to teach it:

Following a discussion of the important skills for creating successful narratives, and before starting this in-class assignment, I would ask all students to read Langston Hughes's essay, Salvation.  Then as a class, we would dissect the passage I gave earlier and discuss what aspects of successful narration are being used in this passage.




This would be an excellent time to point out the precise language Hughes uses, as well as the strategies for writing dialogue.  Students would then be broken into small groups and each group would be assigned a different narrative.  Each group would be asked to analyze their essay looking for the most successful aspects of narration in their selected piece.  They would then come back to the group and discuss their piece.  Their group task would look something like this:

Note Two:  Lesson Idea

I have always gone over leads with my composition students before assigning the writing of their own narratives.  I would like to use my examples with Hosseini's text to help inspire them to be more creative in the openings they write.  (I am excited to use my own writing as a mentor text with my students!)

How to teach it:

I would first do an overview of different ways to write leads using the information in from Heard (pp. 61-63) and Anderson (pp. 126-129), as well as the information that I have used for years.  I would then share some examples with the students, including the two that I shared earlier in this portfolio.  I would start by sharing the excerpt from The Kite Runner:




Then I would explain what appeals to me about this cutting.  We could talk about the precise language, his use of foreshadowing, and how he builds suspense in his opening words.  Then I would show them the lead I didn't choose to use.



As these are seniors, I would explain to the my reasons for not choosing this lead and topic for writing my narrative.  I would then show them the lead that I did choose.




I would then ask students to create three to five different leads for their stories.  Students would then partner up and share all of their leads choosing the best one to incorporate into their narrative.

Note Three:  Lesson Idea

I really like Georgia Heard's (2013) six-word memoir idea.  I enjoyed trying to write my own, and can easily see this as a wonderful way to help my students focus on what they are trying to say.  I found in my own writing that the theme of each piece seemed to come through with the six-word memoir.

How to teach it:

After students have finished their preliminary prewriting, I will ask them to write a six-word memoir on each of their events.  I will show them my prewriting (displayed above) and the memoirs that I have written:




I would explain to my students how these six-word memoirs helped me to focus my thoughts.  This will help them focus their ideas and find theme and tone in their own work.  I would ask students to write a six-word memoir for each of their three chosen events required in the prewriting.

Note Four:  Lesson Idea

At some point I will have to take the time to read all of Jeff Anderson's (2011) wonderful book 10 Things Every Writer Needs to Know.  Unfortunately, I haven't yet found the time.  I have skimmed large sections of it, though, and found some great ideas for teaching composition.  Not the least of which are his lists of well-chosen words to spice up mundane writing. 

How to teach it:

After students have written a first draft and are in the revision process of their work, I will give them copies of these sheets and challenge them to work with an editing partner and find ways to beef up their word choice.  I constantly remind my students that polished authors still edit their work, and there are always ways that we can make our writing better.  

Note Five:  Assessment

I use a similar assessment for all seven writing styles in composition I.  I have had great success with this style of assessment, and will continue to use it to grade student papers.  There is a consistency with keeping the same categories for grading that my students appreciate.  The only thing that changes is the specific markers for each style.  Here is an example for narration that I used this year:

Note Six:  Needed Assignment Changes

After doing my own assignment, I have decided on a couple of minor changes that I will make for next year's students.

First, I will rephrase the original assignment to read "a vivid event from your past" rather than "a vivid event from your childhood."  Many students have struggled to come up with an event from their childhood.  I, for one, have few memories from when I was younger than eleven.  Why should I expect my students to have more than I do?

The second thing I need to consider is the length of the paper itself.  I have always stressed that they are supposed to discuss a single moment in their lives and then explain how that moment changed them.  I thought two pages was enough, and anything longer would lead them to going beyond the duration of a single event.  After writing this piece myself, I am considering allowing for longer papers, especially if I am requiring dialogue.

Note Seven:  Catch-All

Although I didn't use it in this portfolio, I did find a wonderful website dedicated to finding your target audience in writing.  I think that this will work better for research, argument, and persuasive essays, but I can certainly use it for a teaching tool in my classes.  Click HERE to check out Ken McArthur's The Top 10 Ways to Find Your Audience.

I also found a wonderful wiki link entitled How to Write a Personal Narrative.  I think this is a link I will share with my students.  Please click HERE if you want to check out this site.

Final Portfolio Proposal

Portfolio Proposal Statement

Choice of Types:

Since I teach the college composition class here at Onamia High School, I have the wonderful opportunity to teach my Comp I students seven different styles of writing.  Although I have always had good intentions of creating examples, I have only done bits and pieces along the way to clarify issues students have had with the assignments.  Since I always start with narrative writing and description writing, I thought this would be a good chance to try these styles and create mentor texts for my composition students.  (Since I also use these styles of writing with both my eighth and my tenth graders, more focused practice on my part can only enhance my teachings to those students as well.)

Topics of Consideration:

Since I have already created assignments that I use with my composition students, I will work from those assignments to decide on my topics.  

Narrative Assignment Example from Fall of 2014:

Description Assignment Example from Fall of 2014:

I have begun a mind-map on Mindomo to help me make a decision about my topic for a personal narrative.  Please click HERE to see my working mind-map.  (Please remember that it is a work in progress, so not all thoughts will be fully developed.)  I am currently considering writing about one of the following:  the car accident I was in as a child, my mom getting a new car, quitting basketball, becoming a teacher, my brother becoming a priest, getting married, not being able to have children, or the car accident I was in a few years ago.

For a description piece, I am would like to continue working on the piece I started in my writer's notebook on February 2nd, using Fletcher and Portalupi's (2007) Craft Lessons: Teaching Writing K-8.  The craft lesson I focused that writing on was "Using Sensory Details" (p. 62).  This lesson called for the use of imagery.  I have already created prewriting and a brief descriptive narrative.

Mentor Texts:

Although fictional, I love the opening lines of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003).  I would like to explore parroting Hosseini's words as a lead for a piece of writing.  Hosseini wrote, "I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.  I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek.  That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it.  Because the past claws its way out.  Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years" (p. 1). Hosseini does a masterful job of setting up the emotional connection to the protagonist with this opening paragraph, and then allows the reader to discover the character's true nature throughout the novel. I would like to work with creating emotional connection through mood, tone, and characterization.

One text that I use with my composition kids is 75 Readings: An Anthology by Buscemi and Smith (2004). This anthology is a compilation of famous essays written in eleven different styles.  I will focus on the chapters dedicated to narration and descriptions.  The essays that I use with my students include:  Salvation, by Langston Hughes; Coming to an Awareness of Language, by Malcom X; The Death of the Moth, by Virginia Wolf; and Marrying Absurd, by Joan Didion.

Another text we use is Progressions: With Readings, by Barbara Fine Clouse (2005).  Some mentor texts I have used from this book include:  Goodbye, Hunting, by John Bowe; and A Link to the Living, by Patsy Garlan.

I am also looking at using On the Back of the Bus from Ralph Fletcher's Mentor Author, Mentor Texts (2011).

Craft Lesson Ideas:

I am currently looking at using the following craft lessons from the texts for this course:

from Georgia Heard's Finding the Heart of Nonfiction: Teaching 7 Essential Craft Tools with Mentor Texts (2013):

 Writing with Focus (pp. 41-50)

• Asking Questions (p. 43)
• Finding Audience and Purpose (pp. 43-44)
• Distilling information into a six-word memoir (p. 45)

Writing with Imagery (pp. 51-59) and Precise Language (pp. 76-94)

• Turning facts into scenes (p. 59)
• Sensory Words (p. 77)
• Concrete Nouns and Active Verbs (pp. 80-81)
• Avoiding weak word construction (p. 82)
• Using Figurative Language (p. 85)

Leads (pp. 60-67) and Endings (pp. 103-107)

• Trying different leads (pp. 61-63)
• Trying different types of endings (pp. 104-105)

from Ralph Fletcher's Mentor Author, Mentor Texts (2011):

Memoir

• Recreating a disturbing incident (p.60)
• Layering to flesh out skimpy writing (p. 82)

from Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi's Craft Lessons:  Teaching Writing K-8 (2007):

Details and Imagery

• Using sensory details (p. 62)
• Using surprising imagery (p. 98)

Leads and Endings

• Crafting a lead (p. 77)
• Lessons on strong endings (pp. 81-84)

Setting

• Using details to describe setting (p. 43)

Voice

• Writing with Voice (p. 64)
• Creating a dramatic scene (p. 65)

I will narrow these down as I make more decisions about what precisely I will be writing for this portfolio.

Questions and Concerns:

The assignment seems pretty straight forward.  I appreciate the added pocket for teaching; this will require me to look more closely at how I could use this material in the classroom.  I am concerned about choosing to work in two different styles.  Do you think that splitting my focus will make my final project less successful?  Secondly, as I have chosen to focus on narrative and descriptive writing, will it be a problem that I am not researching material on any subjects, but rather the styles in which I have chosen to write?  

The rubric seems clear except for the fact that I can't seem to figure out how the assignment is worth 120 points.  I am not overly concerned as I have always felt that complete work will get a good grade, but I can only find reference to 60 points.

TL 525 - Week 8

I began this journey with a picture that I took of my 5th hour sophomore English class.  I took the picture to show the number of of empty desks I had that day.  Out of the 22 students scheduled to be in my class, six were absent.  I had found earlier a printout of our school's "Attendance Challenge" which put my sophomores in the lead with 91.84% for the month.  That, to me, means that almost 10% of our sophomores are gone every day, and they are winning!  My premise was going to be a letter to my students saying, "We can't teach you if you're not here!"

That changed when I started talking to some of my students about what they thought the issues were in our school.  (I will admit that my "observation walk" quickly became an "observation talk".)

One student quickly replied that the biggest problem in our school is that student leave in mass whenever there is an assembly having to do with the Native American culture (top one one the second picture).  This sparked a lively discussion with a group of students working in my room during my prep.  The thing that struck me was that she, a Native American student, was so obviously offended, yet she felt that there was no way to voice her offense.  She stated that there is nothing the school can do if the parents allow their children to leave.  Basically, she feels that there is no way to change the problem, so it's not worth trying.  Now, I don't know that I can change the problem, but I want her to see that there are ways to voice concern and to attempt to make changes.

At the end of the day, I went to our Indian Education Coordinator and asked her for some details I could use in my paper.  I was interested in the numbers of Native Americans in our school as well as the details on the two recent programs that were presented for our students.

Once I had a little more information, I began by deciding the audience to which I would write this letter.  Choosing the audience would help me determine how I would format the letter.  I had originally thought I would write to the students body encouraging them to stay for this type of programming, but then I remembered the crux of my student's argument.  She said we couldn't change the problem because parents allowed it.  That meant we needed to change the parents and guardians.  They became the focus of my letter.

This decided, I looked into more of the techniques I would use in creating this letter.

After working on a thesis and some ideas, I decided to use the Persuasion Map.  I absolutely love the Persuasion Map from Read Write Think.  (I have already recommended it to the others in my department as well.)  This is simply a wonderful tool for laying out a five-paragraph persuasive essay (or letter).  I found it to be simple to create and save.  It is a wonderful alternative for student prewriting.

Then I wrote the first draft of my letter.  I decided not to worry about letter head at this stage, but just to get the words down on paper.  I decided to type this draft rather than writing it in my notebook.  (I will glue it into my notebook, actually my notebook pages are already curling a bit from all the glued pages!)

Although I love persuasive writing, if the truth be told, this was a difficult letter for me to write.  (I am actually a little embarrassed by this letter; I usually write better than this.) Although I could understand my student's outrage, I don't know that my empathy was enough to create a truly effective letter.  Another reason this was difficult for me was that it seemed, even from the beginning, to be fictitious.  It is a letter that will never be sent (or at least one the school board would have to approve before it could be sent).  Throughout the years I have read articles about the importance of creating authentic assignments for students.  Taylor (2008) spoke of having real audiences for student letters.  Writing this letter, I never felt that it would be sent.  That made it more difficult to write.  (This has been a good learning experience for me in that respect.  Why write something that ends with me or my teacher?  I wonder how many of my students have thought that.)

Things to think about if I revise this letter:
1.  I would like to use an Ojibwe greeting and possibly a closing.
2.  I need to put the final letter on Onamia School letterhead.
3.  I need to pay close attention to tone as not to offend.
4.  I have to watch hyperbole or any of my usual writing yips.
5.  I would like to find the actual dates for the events.
6.  I need to be more specific in my details and consider combining the second and third paragraph.