Today we really worked at revision on our narrative essays. I believe many students think that revision means "someone reads my paper and tells me what to correct." We talked about student ownership of revision and what it really is--that it means "I work on my writing to make it better."
Students received a checklist for narrative essay revision. It includes the strategies, techniques, and requirements we've talked about in class. We devoted some serious work time to revision today, and students worked on various parts of their essays, using the checklist as a guide. In conferencing with students as they worked, I was pleased to see students trying new things: one worked to add background information, another worked to condense a less-than-exciting part of his essay, another tried to add more of what he felt and experienced in order to create an "I was there" feeling for the reader, and several fine-tuned the language of their essays, working to choose clearer, stronger, more specific words. It was exciting to see progress being made! We'll continue to work on our essays on Friday, and hopefully we can get the final versions done before Christmas.
We did a bit more practice with dialogue today. Students worked with partners to correctly punctuate sentences using quotation marks.
Sharing good books and good authors is a natural part of what we do here in class, and today I introduced the students to Gary Schmidt, one of my favorite authors. He writes books intended for middle-schoolers, and he's won two Newbery Honor awards for his work. I shared some background information about Schmidt and his books with the class, and I read a couple pages from his latest book, Okay for Now, aloud. Together we appreciated the language and the story, and I hope some seeds of interest were sown!
Students need to continue to read at home. It's so exciting to see the progress many students are making through their books! Seeing and hearing students share questions, ideas, and opinions of books is also gratifying--even if it sometimes means I have to stop a conversation that's happening at the wrong time! :)
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