Students will practice narrative writing through the processes of pre-writing, drafting, peer-review, and self-evaluation.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
ELAGSE11-12W3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured sequences.
ELAGSE11-12W5: Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience.
ELAGSE11-12L3: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
Plot, dialogue, narration, conflict, theme, inference
After reading A Raisin in the Sun, we concluded our Fiction unit with a creative writing project. Since this was a multi-day project, I'll give a run-down of what we did at each stage. In brief, the goal of this project was for each student to write their own original scene that could be added either before, after, or in-between the events of play. Even before I introduced this project, I had a lot of kids starting to speculate during class discussion, especially about what happens after the end of the play, so I got the feeling that it would be well-received.
Before we even got to talking about the project itself, we started off with some review of plot and character motivations. I decided to go with the "Somebody Wanted But So Then..." method of plot organization (which was introduced to me by one of my wonderful cohort friends!) rather than the more common "witch's hat" plot diagram because I felt that it fit better with a piece of short, character-driven writing. I took some time to explain the parts, model a few examples on my own, and then let the students practice filling out a "SWBST" for each main character in Raisin together up on the board.
Now moving more towards storytelling, students were given time in their journals to brainstorm any ideas, questions, curiorities, and opinions they had about the play and its characters in general. Then from that brainstorm, they picked the most interesting bit and wrote it down on a piece of paper to start off a silent discussion. Desks were in columns, so each column circulated their papers from back to front. This was out first time trying one out, so the process was a little wonky, but several students expressed that they liked silent discussion better than a verbal whole-class discussion, so I made some notes for myself about how to make it smoother for next time.
The purpose of all this brainstorming was to help students get in a questioning frame of mind about the story and to see that there could be many different perspectives for interpretation. I finally introduced the project, and the work session task for the day was to complete a Narrative Prewriting Organizer.
I had skimmed through people's prewrites after Day 1 and noticed some similar issues coming up in a lot of students' work. One: some students were re-explaining part of the original play, rather than creating something new. Two: others were getting lost at the "Then" conclusion section and coming up with endings unrelated to their conflict. To help get everyone back on the right track, I grabbed three examples from each class period for us to review. I pointed out what I thought made each of the three work well, and then we discussed together what the class thought was interesting/confusing about each.
Once we cleared that up, I gave them some time to re-work their prewriting as needed. I made sure to walk around and check in on everyone individually before moving on to explain the formatting of our scene scripts and the rubric by which I would grade them. This would end up being a formative assessment for the unit.
Now that almost everyone had made some significant progress on their first draft, it was time for some revision. To get us thinking, we did another silent discussion in which I prompted them to think about what was the most memorable/interesting scene in A Raisin in the Sun and why. The goal was to pick out some different types of details that make stories "work" and use that list to borrow from in our own writing. This time, I had them circulate their papers snake-wise around the entire classroom, so that passing was more efficient and so that more people would write on the same paper. It definitely went more smoothly this time!
After some time to add a little more to their drafts, we moved on to some peer review. Personally, I think that this stage of revising is the most important in my own work because that is when you can start seeing your writing in connection to a real audience. I don't think I communicated that idea and purpose to my students very well this year, so I'll definitely have to spell that rationale out more clearly next time. My hope is that would help get more kids to buy in and leave more detailed feedback for their peers.
For example, I read through a bit of one student's draft for the class and modeled how I would give useful feedback. You can read their work here and my example response here. The student work here also includes my final draft commentary, which I gave to all the students to justify my grading and in case they wanted to revise. In the feedback form, I borrowed the "Praise, Question, Polish" idea from Traci Gardner via ReadWriteThink.
I also added on a fourth section at the end in response to some discussions we had in our PLC meeting that week. We had noticed that students were still struggling with inferences and themes, so I put in the final box as a quick, informal assessment of where everyone was at. This would also ideally help students see whether or not they were communicating their intended ideas as clearly as they meant to. If a peer made a wildly incorrect inference, that would be a strong signal that some revision was needed. But—the usefulness of that last bit really depends on whether or not the peer reviewer is able to sucessfully infer in the first place, which we knew was a practice point, so I'm afraid that my idealism didn't pan out in this lesson. If I were running this lesson again, I think I ought to be the one giving an inference to each student as "feedback," until I am sure that every kid can do it successfully on their own.
This final day wasn't a full one, but I wanted to include it because it was a lot of fun! The deadline for completing scenes was the end of class on Day 3, after which I had everyone answer a poll about whether or not they'd like to see their scene acted out in class. So by the time class started on Day 4, I had picked out the strongest two scripts, cleaned them up, and printed copies for our actors! I would have liked to make a bigger production out of this and read everyone's scenes who wanted to, but unfortunately I hadn't budgeted enough time in the unit for it.
As a final bit of material, here are the presentation slides I made to break down instructions:
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