story writing

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Home : 2004 : November : 24

story writing
By Tracey

My district has adopted the Lucy Calkin's method for writing, and I have an ESL student who at the beginning of the year could barely write a sentence, and he's now writing a full story. His stories aren't long, but they
do show a beginning, middle, and end to them, and he's even been adding details like thoughts and feelings.
Essentially, in this method, you teach one skill in a minilesson, sometimes you're doubling back and reteaching a skill that you've taught awhile back so those who didn't catch on have another try at it. The lessons are 10 minutes or less, then you send them off to write while

you conference with individuals. For example, over the past week or so, I taught 5 ways to add details; character action, dialogue, character thought, setting, and sensory images. Each day that we tried a new way to add details, we took out an old story (the same one all week) and added that type of detail. In the lesson, I modeled this, and we added to a story I had written earlier in the year. They did an excellent job with it, even though it's a difficult concept.