Demo Lesson

Exploring “Snapshot” Writing and revision

Outline

Skill level required: This lesson can be adapted for all grade levels. Students need to able to read, write, and follow directions.

Items needed: One busy piece of artwork for your students to focus on. For example, Georges Seurat’s famous A Sunday on La Grande Jatte works well with this activity. An item for viewing the art through a lens, like a paper-towel tube. If you have no tubes, students can use their hands. Paper and pencil for writing.

Time Required: This activity needs at least 10 minutes for initial writing, another 10 minutes for “zoomed in” writing, 5-10 minutes for revision, and another 5 minutes for reflection and reading back. 30-60 minutes.

Teacher Preparation: If possible, put the picture or painting on a doc-cam or some other magnifying devise.

The Process:

1. Explain who painted the work and maybe a little about the artist’s background. Use this moment as a teaching opportunity.

2. Ask students to contemplate the artwork and use it to generate a (very) short story or scenic action. Tell them they have 10 minutes. Advise them not to worry about grammar or perfection. Just write.

3. After 10 minutes, ask your students to stop writing. Tell them a story about the power of “zooming in” on a subject and exploring finer details. For example, Ralph Fletcher, an author of children’s books tells of a story about appreciating details. His grandfather developed Alzheimer’s. When writing a story about it, he “zoomed” in on details about his grandfather’s dress. One day his belt was missing. Another day his tie was messed up. He focused in on his grandfather’s dress to “zoom in” and “explode a moment.” – Thanks to Connie Farrell for the anecdote!

4. Now, instruct your students to grab their tubes. If no tubes are available have them cup their hands into the form of a ‘C’. Tell them to focus in on an aspect of the painting. Write about this one aspect they have focused on and nothing else. Give them a few minutes to “zoom in” and another 10 minutes to write.

5. Revision: Now instruct your students to take the new ideas and details developed in the “zoomed in” exercise and add parts of it to their original work. This process will require rewriting and reorganization, so give the students time to adjust their writing.

6. Ask volunteers to read their original piece and their revised piece. What changed? How did this impact their writing?

Activities this plan can lead into:

· A mentor text that emphasizes “snapshot” or descriptive writing.

· A mini-lesson on macro-revision.

· Exploration about how writers read and how readers write.

Use “Snapshot” lesson to:

· Explore multimodal writing “across the curriculum.”

· Get students to debate and synthesize the nuances of a subject.

· Help students develop fluency by reading aloud.

· Get students to think about the revision process:

o Organization

o Planning

o Clarity

· Help students understand to understand the importance of exploring details.

· Help students see the importance of making new discoveries and exploring new ideas and taking those new thoughts and adding them to their writing.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sand in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees – willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ‘coons, and with the spread pads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

There is a path through the willows and among the sycamores, a path beaten hard by boys coming down from the ranches to swim in the deep pool, and beaten hard by tramps who come wearily down from the highway in the evening to jungle-up near water. In front of the low horizontal limb of giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by many fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it.

Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones. And then from the direction of the state highway came the sound of footsteps on crisp sycamore leaves. The rabbits hurried noiselessly for cover. A stilted heron labored into the air and pounded down river. For a moment the place was lifeless, and then two men emerged from the path and came into the opening by the green pool.

They had walked in single file down the path, and even in the open one stayed behind the other. Both were dressed in denim trousers and in denim coats with brass buttons. Both wore black, shapeless hats and both carried tight blanket rolls slung over their shoulders. The first man was small and quick, dark of face, with restless eyes and sharp, strong features. Every part of him was defined: small, strong hands, slender arms, a thin and bony nose. Behind him walked his opposite, a huge man, shapeless of face, with large, pale eyes, with wide, sloping shoulders; and he walked heavily, dragging his feet a little, the way a bear drags his paws. His arms did not swing at his sides, but hung loosely.

WpA StanDardS

Mentor Text

· Learn and use key rhetorical concepts through analyzing and composing a variety of texts.

· Match the capacities of different environments (print and electronic) to varying rhetorical situations.

· Use composing and reading for inquiry, learning, critical thinking, and communicating in various rhetorical contexts.

· Read a diverse range of texts.

Demonstration

· Develop flexible strategies for reading, drafting, reviewing, collaborating, revising, rewriting, rereading, and editing.

· Use composing process and tools as a means to discover and reconsider ideas.

· Adapt composing process for a variety of technologies and modalities.

· Develop knowledge of linguistic structures, including grammar, punctuation, and spelling, through practice in composing and revising.

· Gain experience reading and composing in several genres to understand how genre and conventions shape and are shaped by readers’ and writers’ practices and purposes.

Rationale for “snapshot” Revision demo

Foremost, research shows that revision is a process of experimentation and discovery of one’s own thoughts. Murray describes writing as “the process of using language to discover meaning in experience and to communicate it” (73). Revision, like the global writing process, is a recursive process. Students do several things when they revise: they delete, substitute, add and reorder ideas. We want students to see revision as a process of discovery and exploration, thus the ideas behind “snapshot” revision hold merit. It allows students to revisit their writing after seeing something from a fresh perspective. Students are given the opportunity to look through a lens and see things a little differently – this is exactly what revision is all about. When students look through the writers’ lens, they can explore new ideas, make new connections, and add these discoveries to their writing. The new ideas that have been explored will then, hopefully, enhance the quality of the students’ writing through revision. How is student writing enhanced? As Lane suggests, the writing is improved through the use of sensory language, use of adjectives, coinciding alongside a new vision of revision. The use of a painting in this demonstration not only provides a learning opportunity about a work of art, but it allows the writer to explore new meaning, through language, that can be developed when looking at something from a closer, newer perspective.

Research Discussion