Small Moment: Adding Details that Matter

Objective:  Today your job is to remember what your character/person is doing and write down the words of what you see in your mind. 

One of the lessons that my students need is adding details that add to the story instead of boring details.  Typically writers tell us that the sky is blue, the clouds are white, the bike is red.  The writer using adjectives.  We need to move our writers to writing strong verbs that describe the actions of the characters.  I don’t necessarily say (especially to my first and second grade writers), “We are writing strong verbs that describe the actions of the characters.”  Instead I ask my writers,

• “What did you do when you were swinging at the park?” 
• “What did you do when you saw Grandma sitting by the tree with the wrapped present?”
• “What did you do when you were digging a hole at the beach?”

(This is is assuming that the writer is the character.    The question is also suggesting and supporting verb choice.)

The teacher might encourage the child to picture  what he/she was doing at the beach.  “Close your eyes and remember remember digging the hole in the sand.” 

The child talks to the teacher about the memory:  I remember running on the sand that was hot enough to fry an egg.  The sand sticks to you like glue.  I helped my cousin dump buckets of water into the hole I dug with my cousin. 

Teacher says, “You have told me important details that you remember about your day at the beach.” 

Teacher continues by asking, “What does it look like to dig a hole at the beach?”  She helps the writer act out digging, shoveling, patting, dumping as they practice saying the sentences together.  “I am digging a hole.  I am shoveling the sand.”

Teacher continues talking, “Now let’s think about how these details would sound as a story.”

Kid Story: 

On a hot summer day I played in the sand with my cousin.  I scooped the light sand with my shovel first.  “Look out,” I said as the sand fell back in the hole.  We dragged the dry sand away from the hole with our whole arms.  My cousin said, “It worked.”  I thought the sand was sticky like syrup, but I didn’t mind.  We dug deep, poured water and patted the sides.  I dumped a pail of sand into the water every time my cousin and I filled it.  “Let’s stick our feet in it!” I said to my cousin when we finished.  The sand was wet and squishy.  It was great fun.

Teacher says, “Today I was thinking about digging a hole in the sand.  I was describing what it looked like.  Remember whenever you write, you need to think about the person doing something.”

Small Moments: Person Who is Significant During The Holidays

Often teachers ask me about topic generation. I also know nothing sends terror down the spine of a teacher, then 20 or 25 children who are complaining, “I don’t have anything to write about.” Obviously, I am exaggerating!   Or a child who has written about the same frog for 26 days in a row. It is not a matter of assigning a topic or not a matter of saying, “Don’t assign topics!” The solution is in what is happening in the discussion before writing. When I enter a classroom as a writing consultant, I want all children to write, as do all the teachers, I have ever met. So how does this happen? Students need ideas not assignments for topics.

As we look forward to seeing our students tomorrow, I think about the writing workshops across the country. I want students to write about their significant people. I want children to write about what matters to them. I know if we help our students through questioning to think about traditions that matter, they will write about them. Who did they see over break? What happens every year?
I could write about…

After dinner, Santa comes to our house. He is real. …

OR

Everyone in our family knows that my mom does not mail presents. We all open presents at my mom and dad’s house on Christmas morning. …

OR

My dad cooks once a year. Christmas morning breakfast …

As I think about the ‘who’ and a tradition, it helps trigger a memory and a tradition I could write about. This is what we need to do with our students to prevent a list of “What I got for Christmas!”

I wrote about this topic previously here: Person: Think of person that matters to you

and here: writing about special people

and here: Gooney Bird book teaches about personal narrative

Writing about a Class Experience

One writing idea is to have the class experience something, then write about this experience.

-Sing a song, then tell the students about it, have the students turn and talk about it, then the teacher writes about it using story language.
-Line up to come inside from recess. If it is a nice day, instead of going inside, write outside right now. We just lined up to go inside, let’s write about that. The teacher tells the story on her/his fingers. The writing partners tell the story to each other. I have my chart paper outside and model how right there.
-Walk the kids over to the slide. Have all the students climb up the ladder and slide down. Listen to their language. What are the details you hear? What specific words are the children saying? Everyone sits down after the class experience. First, the teacher tells the story using story language. Next the writing partners turn and talk to each other practicing telling the story using story language. The teacher should model writing about the experience before the children write.
-After a field trip, write about the class experience.
-After any other common experiences by the class, it lends to writing: fire drills, lunch room, music, gym, etc.

We worked on small moments. I modeled my own small moment and then as a class we made one together about lining up for recess. The objective is to take an idea and stretch it out…like an elastic band. We will be working on small moments (narratives) for the entire term. For many of the students it is a new concept.

Small Moments – Narrowing to One Time

We are learning to tell true stories that really happened.  The child is giving lots of examples with the person or the animal.  I can tell lots of times.

Child talking:  I go park lots. I go everyday. I went with mom. I went with dad. I go with dad today. I go with mom today. I go park  a lot. 

Teacher coaches:  Can you tell me about something that one time you had with ______? 

Close your eyes and think.  Lets think of one time.  What did the ____ (character) do?  What did the character say? 

Open your eyes.  Tell me about your story.  Say it like a story.  This is the talking part.  The child tells the teacher about the story.  The teacher will rephrase the words into story language as needed.  If the child says, mom and park.  The teacher will rephrase, “Last night mom walked to the to park.”  This is what is meant by story language.  The teacher might ask what happened next or how were you feeling?  What did you do there?  Did you swing?  Did you go high?  Did mom push you high up on the swings?  Focus on one activity that the character did at the park, not lots of activities. 

Now that you have said your story, it is time to plan it by making a quick sketch.  The child completes plan by sketching something to that will be reminders of the story.   Child starts to write about one time using story language.

Small Moments Links

Small Moment Minilesson and Conference
http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/11/writing-conference.html

List of Small Moment books
http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/10/small-moments-list-of-books.html

http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/07/book-list-for-small-moments.html

Small Moments (Many Moments During a Big Idea)

http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/10/small-moments-many-moments-during-big.html

Small Moment – What Matters to You
http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/10/small-moment-what-matter-to-you.html

Small Moment – Roller Coaster Lesson
http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/10/small-moment-writing-lesson.html

Small Moment by Abby
http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/07/small-moment-writing-by-abby.html

Small Moment using the book, Puddles
http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/07/photo-fridays-mud-puddles.html

Small Moment Components
http://debrennersmith.blogspot.com/2008/07/small-moment-components.html

Personal Narratives According to the kids

What is personal narrative from the perspective of third grade kids –

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=fd50c87db8fbcea5513b

Small Moment Writing by Abby

Grant enjoys climbing and jumping on the rocks in South Haven.

This is our favorite rock. Jumping from rock to rock is so much fun especially when we are with our siblings.


Written by Abby, entering First Grade in the Fall.

Teacher, Aunt Debbie, and Abby had a conference about Abby’s writing. Aunt Debbie noticed that all Abby’s sentences were about the time that Abby played on the rocks. Abby told me that some of her sentences are long and some are short. Aunt Debbie noticed while Abby was writing that she did lots of rereading and checking for meaning. For example, when Abby wrote, “One evening I went to the beach with my siblings and my cuzins.” She wrote up to the word siblings and thought she was done with her sentence. After reading, she decided to add ‘and my cuzins.’ Abby writes her periods after rereading each complete thought. She automatically capitalizes the first letter of her sentences. Since I was sitting nearby, I know that Abby debated with herself about word choice. She asked herself, “Should I say, siblings, Carolyn and Grant, or brother and sister?” She decided on siblings. She wrote, “me and” then erased both words. She changed her grammar to Carolyn and I. She said mama likes Carolyn and I because we say that at our house. I did NO spelling or interference during her writing. She planned using her planning boxes, then wrote her own sentences. She begins first grade in two months.

Photo Friday 2: Mud Puddles

With all the rain this week, this picture and book seemed appropriate. This is a link to the lesson I wrote about playing in mud puddles.

http://www.debrennersmith.com/2008/04/small-moments-with-book-puddles.html

Book List for Small Moments

Rain Feet by Angela Johnson
Do Like Kyla by Angela Johnson
Soft House by Jane Yolen
The Button Boxby Reid
My Grandma’s Cookie Jar by Miller
The Fire by Greissman
Box of treats by Henkes
Where the wild things are by Maurice Sendak
Come on Rain by Hesse
Two of them by Aliki
Adele and Simon by McClintock
In the Heart by Turner

Writing Mini-Lesson: Narrowing Topic

One day I had the opportunity to watch this lesson in a wonderful teacher’s classroom.

Teacher says, “When we try to write about too big of a topic, it gets too much of a list. This spring we had a surprise.

The teacher records Spring Surprise on the graphic organizer.

Spring Surprise

Turn and talk to the other students sitting at your table about what you think the surprise this summer might be. After a minute of two, the teacher pulls the students back together to share their generated responses. The decision this class reached was to write about snow since they all remembered last week’s April snow storm with recording breaking cold temperatures. The teacher records, “snow” in the next circle.

The teacher leads the class in remembering the snowy day. In order to narrow this topic, we must help our students in picturing and reliving the day. The teacher asks the class numerous questions. How was the snow different from other days? This snow was not a light, fluffy snow for building snowmen. So what kind of snow was it? After a small group discussion of 2-3 minutes, where the teacher is inserting and gentling redirecting through questioning, the students finally settled on their next descriptive word of slush.

The next discussion to narrow the topic is how did the slush affect the students? What happened because of the slush? Since their discussion is including many synonyms for snow and slush and all their other words, they are enabled to write richly! What happened with the slush? The students start to laugh and remember who had soaking wet pants. The seat of the pants was wet because the child fell into the sloppy stuff. Another child’s pant legs were drenched all the way up to his knees. Another memory includes being the snow was coming down so hard that we got as wet as we do from a shower. The students keep adding on more and more ideas until they agree that the next narrowed topic is soaking wet includes people’s ideas. The teacher gently redirects off comment conversations keeping the conversation very narrow.

The last narrowing of topic is to connect where did the students experience this snow?

The teacher leads the students to realize that this experience happens on the place of the playground, not in the classroom.

When students write, they often leave out the setting.

They write, ‘it was all a dream’

or ‘I went to bed’

or ‘I was uncomfortable sitting in my wet clothes in school’.

If this writing is about being in the snow, they have experienced all kinds of snow experiences on the playground. Now the writers can bring these experiences into the classroom: slush and sloppy snow, feeling the snow on our face, freezing, and shivering.

The teacher asks, “What else happened on the playground?”

The students answer, “We fell on the playground.” They realize that they did not get well and slush covered in the classroom, but on the playground.”