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Crafting Powerful Life Stories
Crafting Powerful Life Stories
In personal narrative, students write true stories, learning strategies to generate meaningful story ideas, manage pace, elaborate on important scenes, and deepen insights.
Launching Independent Writing Lives and Generating Personal Narratives
Launching Independent Writing Lives and Generating Personal Narratives
Session 1
Setting up to write
Helping writers build a vision
Making charts that our community of writers can use independently
Taking stock, clarifying goals, creating authentic writing task
Session 2
Calling on all strategies to write up a storm
Finding ideas worth writing about
Building volume
Celebrating, sharing, and keeping ideas flowing
Session 3
Writing from moments that really matter
Anticipating and addressing predictable problems as students draft
Writing to bring out a feeling
Thinking "Who am I as a writer?" to bring out meaning
Session 4
Telling the story from the narrator's point of view
Using details that convey the meaning we intend
Writers choose what they will and will not include
Living inside the details of the moment
Session 5
Reading closely to learn from other authors
Helping students discover new lessons from mentor texts
Make time for writers to write
Setting your own assignments
Session 6
Taking stock: Pausing to assess and set goals
Helping your writers to set goals
Crafting systems to keep track of goals
Clarifying goals and making plans for meeting them
Moving through the Writing Process and Toward Our Goals
Moving through the Writing Process and Toward Our Goals
Session 7
Rehearsing: Experimenting with beginnings
Crafting a lead that draws readers to the heart of the story
Carrying everything you've learned into new writing situations
Sharing powerful beginnings
Session 8
Flash-drafting: Get the whole story on the page
Session 9
Using writer's notebooks for mindful, goal-driven work
Working steadfastly toward goals
Writers keep their tools close at hand
Committing to a goal-and practicing, again, and again
Session 10
Re-angling and rewriting to convey what a story is really about
Rally students for the hard work of true revisions
Keeping partners accountable-and hence effective
Sharing techniques with other writers
Session 11
Elaborating on important scenes and adding new ones from the past
Revising for meaning in myriad ways
Using the rubric for narrative writing to self-assess for paragraphs
Session 12
Calling on all strategies to write up a storm
Finding ideas worth writing about
Building volume
Celebrating, sharing, and keeping ideas flowing
Highlighting students' revision process and their growth as writers
Writing a Second Personal Narrative with New Independence
Writing a Second Personal Narrative with New Independence
Session 13
Taking charge of the writing process: Deciding where to begin and how to revise from the get-go
Encouraging independence
Coaching writers to plan
Carrying forward all you know
Session 14
Slowing down and stretching out the story's problem
Using leveled student writing to help students with next steps
The emotions of secondary characters can grow in intensity, too
Make sure that each character has a strong arc
Session 15
Ending stories in meaningful ways
Supporting effective use of revision strategies
Creating more powerful story endings
Sharing many powerful endings
Session 16
Editing sentences for rhythm and meaning
Session 17
Publishing and celebrating as a community of writers
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