During this writing conference I work with Ashley on showing the importance of her experience by including character feelings. Prior to our interaction in this clip I had Ashley read what she had written. This gave me a chance to see her work and to think about where I might take her. Then I asked her what her plan was, and she talked about wanting to make her reader guess who she was talking about in her story. There were strong feelings associated with this story for Ashley, so in order to help her get at its significance I urged her to focus on identifying those feelings.
When I began the conference with Ashley, my plan was to find out what she was working on. I looked at her writing the night before and knew that she had her lead written and was beginning to move forward with her story. We had been talking about providing clue words to build suspense and to stretch out moments, so I restated her plan by naming the strategy she was using. Because Ashley wanted to provide clues for her reader in addition to continuing to stretch out the events in her story, I felt that she would benefit from a suggestion to include character feelings. Ashley is a very purposeful writer and cares about her audience, and I felt she would be very open to learning another strategy to help her further stretch her events. Using an example from Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe, I explained how writers use feelings to help the reader understand experiences better. In this particular mentor text, the author described the feelings with statements such as "I could feel myself smiling."
| TEACHER: | Do you know what I was thinking, because you've been telling me you really like to use the clue words? I was thinking when I was reading this that we've been talking a lot about feelings and I know you probably have a lot of feelings going on about this whole school experience. I know by looking at your story trail where you had the little part and you showed the feeling. So what I was thinking was, that we could work on is to really help you better understand why this is important to you. You could try to include your feelings just like in Fireflies. Remember when the little child at the end says, I was smiling, and really show those feelings? |
| STUDENT: | Yeah. |
| TEACHER: | I thought maybe that's something that you could really work on to maybe help your reader understand how you're feeling. So is that something you might be able to include? |
| STUDENT: | Yes. |
| TEACHER: | Okay. And if you want to try that out you can go back and see if there's a part to add in. Is there anywhere that you think that you were feeling something but you didn't have a chance yet to tell your reader? |
| STUDENT: | Let me... |
| TEACHER: | Yeah. Take some time. |
| [pause] | |
| TEACHER: | Why were you scared of that? |
| STUDENT: | Because I heard a little noise and I didn't know what it was. Since I live close to the school I hear the bell sometimes. |
| TEACHER: | Was it the bell ringing? |
| STUDENT: | Yeah. |
| TEACHER: | Oh, you heard the bell ringing at that time? Oh, wow. I didn't realize what it was. Let's see. "I was a little scared because I didn't know what it was." Okay, then that makes sense but over here that's when you heard the bell again. So that's really great. You showed your reader your feelings. So what I want you to remember is that the parts you really want your reader to understand, why this is important to you and what you're feeling, those are parts when you put your feelings in. OK? Great work today, Ashley. |