Meaning
“Talking Dog” is a writing piece that was a result of a teacher prompt, though, in discussion, C has expressed interest in writing fantasy stories that include animals. In the story, C incorporates her real life pets and puts them in a fantasy setting, in this case, where they talk to each other for a day. Being able to engage these animals, which C is so fond of, makes here enjoy the writing process and take pride in her work, because of the personal interest that C has.
Six Traits
Ideas & Content
Though C’s story about a talking dog does include her dog, which talks, the story tends to be focused more on the talking squirrel. Since the title of the story is “Talking Dog,” I would believe that the story would focus on the talking dog. Even during the planning process of the story, C includes more details that entail the squirrel as a main character, instead of the dog. Instead, the squirrel’s dialogue is present in more of the story. Then, at the end, C closes the story by saying, “I still remember the day animals talked.” These lead me to believe that C has a hard time staying focused on the main idea and gets pulled into the details.
Another example of this was when I first met C and was helping her brainstorm ideas on ways to make Juanita Elementary better. She had said that adding an indoor swimming pool would make the students happier because students could exercise and a school team could form, similar to the team at the local junior high. When talking more about making students happier, C seemed to focus on the detail of creating a school swimming team and seemed to leave the other ideas behind.
Organization
C includes a recognizable beginning and conclusion to her story, but both the beginning and the end of the story tend to cause some confusion to the reader. The story beginning with C’s dog, Guy, waking her up in the middle of the night by saying that he has to “go” (to the bathroom, I presume). Since this is the first time that the dog talked, and it takes place in the middle of the night, the reader is lead to believe that this story is about a dream, instead of believing that it was a real occurrence. The last event of the story also takes place at the same time (in the middle of the night), but then it was suddenly the following day and the animals didn’t talk anymore. Having both the beginning and the ending events of the talking animals occur in the middle of the night, the reader is still left to believe that this was a dream, but at the end of the story C says that was the day the animals talked (coincidently, she never mentioned the animals talking during day hours).
Voice
Knowing her audience, her teacher, and the purpose of the writing was in response to a teacher prompt, C does a good job at writing an engaging story because the purpose is of personal interest to her. The narrative does come across as C’s perspective of how animals would interact if they were able to do so through talking. In other points throughout the story C inserts her voice, or something the sounds typical of a fourth grader, by saying things like, “go figure.”
Word Choice
Few striking phrases are used in “Talking Dog”, but the one that stands out the most is when C says, “Guy was acting like he was in a Mexican cha cha dance.” This descriptive phase gives the reader a clear understanding of the image that she is trying to convey. There are many opportunities that C has to add more descriptive phrases that will paint a picture in the reader’s head if that were the focus of the writing.
Sentence Fluency
Each sentence that C uses is well thought out and each of them flow well with the use of transitional phrases. Considering the topic of the story and the perspective of the author, the dialogue sounds natural between the dog and the squirrel. Though completely unnatural, I could imagine that a dog would say, “hurry, hurry, hurry,” and repeating short words to convey what they want, just like I would imagine them saying things like “ball, ball, ball” or “Leash? Walk. Leash? Walk.” In addition to allowing the reader to hear the dialogue in their own head, C’s dialogue gives the reader to give good expressions if being read aloud.
Conventions
The rough draft of “Talking Dog” has some conventional problems, but she has also self-corrected some as she has gone along in her writing. In the beginning, C did not capitalize her dog’s name and wrote “guy”, but then had the correction marks on the page (though it’s hard to tell if that was the correction of C or her teacher), but later on the name was capitalized. Another convention problem that C seems to have is having the dialogue flow into the paragraphs, instead of separating them out into individual paragraphs that are indented (I’m not sure if that has been taught at C’s grade level). Overall, though, C’s use of spelling, punctuation, and grammar is correct and does not distract from the readability of the story. As stated before, it is hard to tell which corrections have been made by C herself or the teacher.
Ownership
Though this story was written based upon a teacher prompt, C has expressed interest in writing fantasy stories. Equally, C mentions her love of her animals, including her dog Guy and a “pet” squirrel that she has at home. These two things, in addition to the way that C introduced the piece of writing to me, makes me believe that she took a lot of pride in this piece of writing in particular.
In general, C has mentioned that writing is one of her favorite subject in school, along with math. In further questions about her interests, C mentions that she enjoys writing fantasy, specifically something that could possibly happen. If given her choice in starting a writing prompt, C would begin a story with, “One day on a cold day in January” and would substitute the weather and month depending on the time of year that the prompt would occur.
Spelling Development
In her writing sample, C does a good job at spelling, though misspells squirrel as squiral and lying as lieing. The misspelling of these two words is understandable, since they are uncommon to a forth grader’s written language and lying, in particular, does not follow most of the –ing rules that would have been taught up to this grade level.
During the spelling inventory, C made only two errors within the first 17 words, and one had to do with using the incorrect tense of a word. During this time of the spelling inventory, I only said the words and did not use them in the sentence. Then, as I progressed through the word list, I started using the words in sentences, since they were words may be uncommon to fourth graders. In this process I was having a hard time using the word, and the correct tense, in a sentence, which may have contributed to some of the misspellings. Anyways, I would C needs help with syllable junctures or inflected endings, specifically at the early stage of syllables and affixes.
Conclusion
Based upon the finding in the six traits, I believe that C would benefit from working on focusing on a main idea and supporting it throughout the story. Especially because C enjoys writing, and assuming that she will want to continue writing in her free time, C would benefit on focusing her ideas and supporting them.
Lesson Plan
Objective
To analyze the student’s main idea and support it by including details to support the main idea of the story “Talking Dog” and re-writing the existing sentences.
Standards –
GLE 1.1.1 – Applies more than one strategy for generating ideas and planning writing.
GLE 3.1.1. Analyzes ideas, selects a narrow topic, and elaborates using specific details and/or examples.
Material – Pencil, lined notebook paper, and worksheet (provided by teacher).
Instructional Strategies – I will be working with C in writing conference format with her rough draft of “Talking Dog.”
I will introduce a worksheet with C that will ask her to write out the main idea of the story and the three events that occurred that support the main idea. After each event, C will write in how the event supports the main idea. If C struggles with finding the events, or expressing how the events support the main idea, I will assist her by asking her leading questions in hopes that she will come to the conclusion on her own.
After this part of the worksheet is completed, I will ask C if she can find a way that she can use the ideas that she has and turn them into sentences that support the main idea. If she is unable to do so, I will ask her to write new sentences that will replace the existing sentences.
The last step would be to have C rewrite her draft by including the revisions that were made as a result of completing the worksheet and working with her. In addition to seeing how she has progressed in her writing, it will also give me a better understanding of which conventions corrections were made by her and which ones were made by the teacher in the original rough draft.
Assessment
I will assess C’s new draft with her original rough draft to see if the ideas and events support the main idea. Additionally, I will ask her questions, after reviewing the new draft, about her events and why they support her main idea, to make sure that the written words convey the ideas she had in her head.
