In this response group, Trey is looking for help from a student writer as he works to develop the beginning of his story. At this moment in the clip Elijah is offering suggestions Trey might want to incorporate or that might help him to think about the kind of writing he wants to do.
Trey wanted to elaborate on the details that led up to important events when he described how he learned to ride his bike for the first time. Elijah likes to include sensory details in his writing and suggested that at the beginning of the discussion. After Trey read what he had written and explained what he was working on, they came to the conclusion that Trey could add character feelings. At that point, Elijah was suggesting the actual words Trey could use. One of my goals had been to help them coach their peers without providing them with the exact words (something I am also working on). In this case, Trey expanded on Elijah's idea because he is a writer who thinks carefully about word choice. Elijah's suggestion to write about being scared led Trey to think of synonyms that would be more powerful - "shocked" and "frightened." Trey did include feeling words ("scared" and "nervous") and character descriptions that showed feelings ("I went home with a big smile.")
| STUDENT: | Maybe you could put in like, like, like, that, somewhere that I thought that like my sister was going to get like scared or something. |
| STUDENT: | You mean like frightening. |
| STUDENT: | Yeah. [inaudible]. |
| STUDENT: | Like shocked. Maybe I can write it now, or I could write it later at my seat. |
| STUDENT: | Or you could say that you were jealous or nervous and you couldn't find it for hours. |
| TEACHER: | OK, those are good suggestions so you can think about and decide about whether you want to use that. And you can [write it at your table] maybe you could check back in Elijah and show him what you worked on. |
| STUDENT: | Thank you Elijah. |