Pink+Writing+Mini-Lesson

Grade: 4

Time: 15 Minutes

Standards: Writing Standards Text Types and Purposes 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences. b. Use dialogue and description to develop experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.

Objective: Students will integrate dialogue into their personal narratives.

Materials: · //Pink and Say// by Patricia Polacco · Copied page of text · Dialogue Worksheet · Overhead Projector/Smartboard

Lesson Sequence: · Anticipatory Set: o “Boys and girls, one more time this week we will be using the book //Pink and Say//. Did you notice that throughout the book Patricia Polacco uses much dialogue between the characters Pink and Say?” · State Objective and Purpose: o “Today we will be going back to our personal narratives and integrating dialogue into them.” · Teach and Model: o “Here I have a copied page from //Pink and Say.// Dialogue is an exchange of words between characters. While looking at the dialogue on this page, I notice a few characteristics. When writing dialogue, the reader has to be aware a character is speaking. You use quotation marks to allow the reader to know it is dialogue. They are used at the beginning and end of each quote.” o “Looking at the end of this page, a few different types of punctuation are used at the end of the quotes. Since most dialogue doesn’t end the sentence, you can’t put a period. In this sentence (point marker to line 19), Pink is asking a question and therefore there needs to be a question mark before the quotation marks.” o “In the next line, Say is responding to Pink’s question by making a statement. A comma is used since the dialogue does not end the sentence.” o “Three lines down there is another form of punctuation used at the end of the dialogue. This time, Say is excited and Patricia Polacco uses an exclamatory sentence to show this. At the end of the dialogue there is an exclamation mark.” o I would circle all three examples as I was speaking about them. o “Another characteristic of dialogue is that each time there is a new person speaking, there is a new paragraph. If you look at the five lines we just used for punctuation, you can see that even though there are only a few words in a paragraph, a new one is formed when the other character speaks. This is to keep the dialogue flowing and to not confuse the reader as to who is speaking.” o “One more thing to remember is that at the beginning of all dialogue, there is always a capital letter.” o “I just asked everyone to take in a lot of information, does anyone have any questions?” · Guided Practice: o “Here I have a worksheet I will be giving each of you. On it there is dialogue without punctuation. While we are sitting on the carpet, I would like to go over this page with you as a class.” o “Using the first sentence, who can tell me one part of punctuation that’s missing and why it needs to be there?” o I would ask different students to figure out the missing punctuation for every sentence. o Two sentences would be missing quotation marks, commas and a period, two would be missing exclamation marks, quotation marks and a period, and two more would be missing question marks, quotation marks, and a period. · Independent Practice: o “Boys and girls, I would like you all to go back to their seats and take out the personal narrative you are currently working on. Your goal today is to add dialogue to at least one part of the story. If you have already added dialogue, go back and make sure you have used the correct punctuation and capitalization.” · Closure: o “I would like you all to try and use dialogue in each of your personal narratives from now on.” · Assessment: o I will know student’s learned how to integrate dialogue into their personal narratives by reviewing their edited stories.