Again, we used my realistic fiction unit and their novel study units. We used Jason Reynolds novel, Ghost for their mentor text. I have since also added a sixth grade example for everything. Take a look at this example with notes a student wrote on her rough draft. Now we’re on rough drafts too, and they’re seriously amazing. The sample rough draft below shows you an example of just how much more work a rough draft can need, even a really solid first draft. It was REALLY HARD for all of us, especially in the planning stages, but I scaffolded and modeled A LOT. Essentially, I was asking them to write another chapter of the book. Their middle school narrative essays still had to have a plot and climax that was completely developed. With this in mind, my 8th graders had to continue Ponyboy’s narrative. Even more so, instead of them just having to write from the point of view of a character, I actually wanted them to have to do some of that hard thinking that they might be missing out on by not doing a personal narrative. I still did the same thing with my 7th graders this year, and we are just about done writing our rough drafts.įor 8th grade, I had the same students, so I decided we would read The Outsiders. It was honestly perfect as I learned two new grade levels, but that meant I changed things up a lot in the following years. My first year teaching middle school ELA, I taught a lot of the same lessons to both seventh and eight grade. We also focus a lot on thinking critically about the texts we read. I use the novels to teach literary elements and they use that knowledge to write their middle school narrative essays. I used my Realistic Fiction and Literature Terms/Devices unit, along with Freak the Mighty. When we read narrative writing and create our anchor chart, we talk about using transition words like first, next, and last. I model looking at my picture and label and them using it to write a sentence. They were some of the best essay I’ve ever read. Once my students have labeled their pictures, I model how to write a first draft. Students had to write from Freak’s or from Killer Kane’s point of view. My first year, we read Freak the Mighty in both seventh and eighth grade. Plus they’re final essay and their writing are just SO FREAKING GOOD. They truly use narrative craft because they have a complete and well done mentor text to constantly reference. I found that when students have to use narrative elements to become a character from a narrative mentor text, they don’t spend days trying to figure out what to write. Plus, sometimes it’s REALLY hard for kids to write something meaningful about the first time they were stung by a bee… or whatever small moment I spend hours and days trying to help them come up with. I just feel like kids have written 8-10 personal narratives by the time they get to me, and we are all over it.
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