Writing Workshop Session 12 (Personal Narrative)

Using All Available Resources to Aid with Final Touches

Writers, you have many tools to use

*Charts/Posters around the room
*Checklists (Editing Checklist and Narrative Writing Checklist)
*Mentor texts

As writers who are near the finish line of a project, checklists should be used often.

To use a checklist appropriately, one cannot check for everything all at once.

You can't just read it over one last final time before you say "I'M READY TO PUBLISH!"

Instead, each time you re-read your draft you should have a different focus or lens - or a different goal you are looking to to achieve.

Narrative Writing Checklist:
Each time you read your draft - you should revise a different aspect of your draft.  Here is a suggested order:




1. Overall
2. Elaboration
3. Craft
4. Organization
5. Lead
6. Transitions
7. Ending
8. Spelling
9. Punctuation and Sentence Structure

Then go to the charts around the room and see if there are any last techniques you want to try.

Active Engagement:
Consider what your plan needs to be in order to revise your draft.  Share this plan with your writing partner.  If you need, work together to self-asses your draft in order to come up with a few goals and places for revision.

Share:
Next week we will enter into the final bend of this unit during which you will begin new personal narratives.

What you'll learn in this final bend will lead to even stronger pieces! You will be able to then choose one of your narratives to take all the way to a published masterpiece!

We will take a moment, however, to celebrate all the hard work you've done on this draft and all the ways you've grown as a writer through the hard work of revision!

Be thinking as you work this week on a favorite part you'd like to share with the entire class!

Homework:  Before we begin the third and final bend, write a new personal narrative in your journals.  Remember your generating strategies when thinking of an idea to write about.  You may re-read your journal and stumble across an idea you never got to turn into a story. Recall everything you've learned about writing powerful narratives that have a deeper meaning at their core!