Narrowing the Focus

What’s another tool -craft element- in our writing tool boxes?



Ralph Fletcher introduces the element of “Narrowing the Focus “and suggests Grades 3 and 4 are ready to learn this element, but possibly many students in lower grades may also be helped in their writing by using a graphic like the one he suggests.

Kids like to write about topics they know –don’t we all?  But they are apt to bite off such gigantic topics as “My Life” “School” or “My Family” – again, passionate topics for them.  But they may not have a window into how to put “meat on the bones” of a topic like “Cousin Land”.  Fletcher suggests drawing an extra-large pizza and, for example, name the pizza “My Family”.  And pushing the pizza analogy, ask if they could eat an entire pizza – or one slice of pizza at a time.  Further questions like “Who is the one person who is really special to you?”  If it’s Grandma – write about her. You might even draw another large pizza and put Grandma across the entire pizza, and then suggest that putting special things about Grandma might be a way to organize.

Fletcher et al also suggests using such a graphic for writing a simple report on nonfiction topics.  For example, a student who wants to write about “Sharks”; this graphic may help them identify a subtopic, such as, “How Sharks Survive”. 

All the graphics are not the writing part – but rather a window into how to structure the writing.  We shouldn’t get lost in the perfect graphic and the “prettiest”, but rather see such graphics as means to the end – a piece of writing with a strong focus.  Then the “slice” analogy helps the writer to only include information that fits within this “slice”.


I’m also including a link to a document on Anchor Charts – Lots of great information on these anchor charts – and the graphics are outstanding.  Again, if you – like me – struggle with the “cutsie” art – let’s remember it doesn’t have to be perfectly drawn; anchor charts just serve to remind students (and teachers) of important points and steps in a process.   One teacher suggested that when she is learning procedures, etc., she often puts anchor charts behind the students – in a place where she can read them – a great idea!  I can see doing that as some of us get more comfortable with Jan Richardson’s guided reading steps. 

Marty

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Slice of life

Good evening  I am curious about your own writing.  Do any of you have a writing practice, such as, journaling?  Just wondering.  If I were a betting man, I’d put money on it that many of you do have a writing habit of sorts – if not now, perhaps earlier in life.  Please consider sharing a posting with us – or even on the bigger stage of Two Writing Teachers Blog. Last week I talked about the blog – Two Writing Teachers. This blog offers us the opportunity to share a piece of our own writing on pretty much any subject. You will find the means to do that under “Slice of Life” .  Just wanted to throw this out to anyone so inclined.  I’m going to push myself to post something.  Courage, right?    At any rate, my thoughts on writing focused on Heart Maps or Close to the Bone maps.  It seems to me that such a map would be beneficial for different writing responses, and most especially when we require students to write t...
Read more

Valentines Day

Carpe diem!  Happy Valentine’s Day!   Kids – and boyfriends and girlfriends– and adults who have special relationships with kids - that would be grandparents, for sure, want to show some expression of their love.   We send our cards with hearts and Xs and Os – and many of us spend a few minutes reading the sentiment inside the card – the thought needs to be a good fit.  Why not take the time to compose our own message to our Valentine?   I have been reading a fair amount about using mentor texts to teach the craft of writing.  Lucy Calkins and Katie Woodray (Wondrous Words) continually advise us to really get to know several good books – like inside and out.  What are the “tricks” of their writing?   What are the craft elements the author weaves into the writing? Writing gurus are reminding us to stop when we are reading a well written passage - “Hey look at that.  Look at how she wrote that!”  Try to fig...
Read more

Mother's day

Here’s an idea -  Mother’s Day comes in this final month and all of us can conjure up how our students might write a message to probably the most important audience in their live – their Mom. I think most kids can hang their writing hats on the following idea. The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown could be used as a mentor text to show students how authors like Brown developed a message and to create a written Mother’s Day message for their own mothers.   Brown selects several mundane important things/events and builds the case for why each is important.  She opens giving a strong reason explaining why the thing/event is important. She continues building a case for its importance with several other reasons.  And she ends each description with the same sentence as the first.    Listen to the oral reading , and you will see and hear the effectiveness of the message that is set in a poetic rhythm. I have given you a verse using Margaret Wise Brown...
Read more