In this writing conference I supported Thomas in stretching his writing by emphasizing a description of character feelings. I read through his piece to see what he had written from the day before and saw that he had explored the importance of his story deeply: the idea of facing his fears. I complimented the great thinking he was doing about word choice and reminded him how rereading allowed him to think about other words to use for his description.
I decided that Thomas would be able to help his reader understand the importance of the story by including character feelings and the changes in these feelings throughout his story. Thomas already thinks about and sometimes includes feeling statements in his writing. During some of our read-aloud work and through reading conferences, I learned that he was able to make inferences from character actions and other character descriptions in books. Therefore, once I planted the seed in his mind about including this type of description, he immediately tried out the strategy. He needed support in figuring out how to decide where and how to insert this detail. I showed him, and he was off to work.
| TEACHER: | Where is the main event, your most important part? That was when in an haunted house, right?. Will you find that part for me? |
| STUDENT: | When I saw the house and - |
| TEACHER: | Okay, right. |
| STUDENT: | - and when went in the house and he came out and asked if I wanted a candy. So I saw he had red teeth. |
| TEACHER: | Okay, so I asked my dad to go with me. He said no because it's Halloween night. So I went up the house, I rang the door bell and it said, "ooooooo." The door squeezed open. I can really imagine that. A man wore a vampire suit and red teeth. |
| STUDENT: | I want to change teeth into fangs. |
| TEACHER: | You want to change teeth into fangs? Wow, great, thinking about more powerful words that describe exactly what you saw. Great job, Thomas. When you reread like that it really helps you think of some other ways you could write your story. Okay. You know what I'm thinking here? You're not quite sure where to go with it. It may need some more details that you're not sure where they would go. I just had a conference with Ashley and it was about how writers put their feeling into story, to really show the important part because we know that you have some really strong feelings here, right? So for you, I think that you're probably ready to be able to show those feelings and not just state them. Instead of saying, I'm scared, you'd actually show them this. See I knew we could have a great conversation about this, Thomas. So that's something you could think about. Maybe finding a part where you could show how you're feeling so you could really understand. So maybe you can go back and try that. |