In this writing conference I coach Cesaleigh through a process of thinking about the path her story will take in order to develop context for figuring out the details that will be important to include in her story. When I began the conference with her I asked about her plan for her writing. She told me she was working on a part of the story about going to a sleepover. She was writing about how her friend showed her a stuffed animal. My work here was to coach her through planning the events she would be stretching out as she drafted.
In past conferences, Cesaleigh and I spent time thinking about the importance of her story. She wanted to show how she was nervous at first but then had a lot of fun doing different activities with her friend. Because her topic spanned an entire day rather than being focused on one specific event, I thought it would be important to help Cesaleigh stay focused on the overall plan for the writing she was drafting.
In looking at Cesaleigh's writing, I saw she was attempting to stay close to her plan - stretching out the events she felt were most important to the story and moving through time quickly between key events. Although there is work she can do to improve the clarity of her message and to show the reader the importance of these sleepover events, Cesaleigh developed as a writer in thinking carefully about what to include in her piece and what to leave out. In later conversations, she explained that she purposely left out certain details in order to move the story along.
| TEACHER: | Oh. So when Alexis's house she was telling you about her stuffie in the hall. Now, is that important, because in your story you talked about how you were a little nervous about going to the sleepover for the first time? So how come you decided to put that part in? |
| STUDENT: | To stretch it out. |
| TEACHER: | To stretch it out? What's it showing when you put that in there? What does it show us? |
| STUDENT: | That she's a good friend. |
| TEACHER: | Yes. She's a good friend because she wanted to make you feel better by showing you the stuffed animal. Wow! That's really great, Cesaleigh. When I was looking at your piece and I see you're trying to move forward and stretch out these parts that are important, I wanted to talk to you again about your whole plan for your piece because after stretching these parts out, it's really helpful as a writer to know where you're going. And you know we talked about that on your story trail, right? Well, maybe you could pull that out, just to remind yourselves where your story is going to - where the middle is going to be and where the end is going to be. So could we pull your story trail out and maybe look at that together? Great. Okay, so where are you right now in this part where Alexis is showing you, right at that beginning. That's right. When you made this - you made the story trail go like this, because this is a very important part when she's showing you that stuffed animal. That's really good thinking. Okay, so what were - what were you thinking again, about, now you're doing this part here, stretching out and your first step was sleepover. Okay. What parts do you think you were going to really want the reader to know a lot about? The game? Why was playing the games important? |
| STUDENT: | I didn't know how to play one game and I got more than Alexis in Perfection. |
| TEACHER: | Okay. So this is a part that you're going to really stretch out. Okay. So I just wanted to show you was that, since you want to get to this part, you're on an important part here, you said. And you want to get to another important part it's helpful for you to know that as you're getting there you might want to spend the rest of the time talking about details here and more time stretching the details. Like in Too Many Tamales [by Gary Soto] when you found the parts where there were lots of pages about one idea. Okay? So what do you think you might do after you get through the part where she shows you the animal? |
| STUDENT: | [points] |
| TEACHER: | Okay. How do you think you'll get there? Do you think you'll talk at all about other parts of the story? Will you say a little bit about what happens in between here and here? |