This lesson is modeled from the "Your Turn Lesson 2" found in chapter 4 of the book Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6 by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli and uses the children's book Shortcut by Donald Crews
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Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6 (2nd ed.). Portland, ME: Stenhouse.
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Crews, D. (2011). Shortcut. Halifax, N.S.: Atlantic Provinces Special Education Authority Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired.
YOUR TURN LESSON:
SMALL MOMENT NARRATIVE STORY
Your Turn Lesson 2: Using Illustration to Add Details
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Sometimes, writers can be in a hurry when they write, and they try to rush from beginning to the end of their story. When we rush like this, sometimes we leave out a lot of details in the middle of our stories, and this can make our stories sound more boring than they actually are. When we rush, our readers are left trying to imagine what happened in our story because we left out the details to tell them. How can we make sure to add more details into our story? We can add illustrations!
Hook: Use a picture book where the illustrations add details that are not explicitly found in the text. Books I'd suggest would be Shortcut by Donald Crews, Arthur's Pet Business by Marc Brown, and One Day, The End: Short, Very Short, Shorter-Than-Ever Stories by Rebecca Kai Dotlich.
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No matter which book you choose, you'll want to read it aloud to your students. Be sure to stop on some pages where specific details are only found in the illustrations displayed on the pages, and not in the text.
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Ask your students to compare what they see in the illustration with the text, and to think about the details that are missing from the text that they see in the illustration.
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For my lesson, I'm using Shortcut by Donald Crews.
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Purpose: Writers, sometimes good authors use illustrations only to add details to their stories. Sometimes when we write, we're not always able to add illustrations and pictures, so we have to add important details in the words we write for our stories- in our text. Today, I'm going to show you how we can add more detail into our stories to help our readers build a better picture of what is happening in the stories we're writing.
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Brainstorm: Go back to the picture you used in the hook. Ask your students to think about what they see happening in the picture- what they see, what they think the characters might be saying, what they think the characters might be feeling, what sounds they think the characters might be hearing, and so on.
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I love having my students "Turn-and-Talk" during lessons. This allows every student the ability to talk out loud to someone and for every student to contribute an idea. Allow students a few minutes to turn and talk, and have them share their ideas in whole group. Try to get as many details as possible. As students share their ideas, write them down on a whiteboard or on a piece of paper displayed by the document camera onto the wall. Make sure students can see you create a list of all of their ideas.
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In Shortcut, Donald Crews tells a story about a group of children that decided to take a shortcut on the train tracks instead of the long way home. On the specific page I chose, the children hear the train whistle getting much louder, and start to run down the tracks to avoid the oncoming train. The responses to the accompanying text "The train whistle was much louder. 'Back to the cut-off!' 'RUN'" might include these:
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The children look scared.
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The children are running down the tracks to get away from the train.
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The girls are holding hands while they run. Sometimes I hold someone's hand when I'm scared, too.
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The children are terrified because their mouths are open like they are surprised and scared.
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The boy with the orange shirt looks the most scared because he isn't even turned around to see the train. He looks like he is running the fastest from the train.
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Continue writing down student responses to other illustrations found on that page and/or the pages describing how the children feel or what they are doing.
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Model: Use the student responses and model how you could expand on the few sentences of the text using details from the illustration. For the example I gave, you could write something like this:
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The train whistle was much louder. "Back to the cut-off!" "RUN!"
The children were terrified. Some of the girls held hands as they ran. Their mouths dropped open, surprised and frightened. One of the boys was the most scared. He didn't't even turn around to see the train like the rest of them. They ran as fast as they could down the tracks to get away from the train.
Shared/Guided Writing: In whole group, use the written student responses from one of the other pictures to write a short paragraph. Students could also work in pairs to write paragraphs from other charted responses, or look for other examples in the book where details are found in illustrations and add them to existing text.
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The page above could be displayed for the whole group of students to see. Ask students to turn and talk with their partners and create a paragraph based on the text and the illustration.
Be sure to create your own paragraph, too. It's important that your students see you writing!
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My paragraph looks like this:
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The train passed. We were all fine. We climbed onto the tracks. We hurried to the cut-off and onto the road.
It was dark. We were all very quiet. No one wanted to talk about what just happened. We were all still scared and in shock from the train. We could still hear the loud train whistle and the clacking of the tracks in our ears.
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I would share my paragraph last. Allow students to share their own paragraphs and be excited about their writing, instead of wishing their paragraph looked like yours. It's important for them to see that you write, though.
Praise them! Be specific. Say exactly what you liked from what they wrote. Make sure students feel acknowledged and important. This fosters a love of writing, and this is exactly what you want to create!
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Independent Writing: Ask students to look at a piece of writing where the events may not be fully explained in the text. Invite them to add details with words as if they were creating a picture. Students are welcome to work in pairs during peer conferencing to help each other identify and find places in their own writing where the reader might need more detail to have a clearer picture in their mind about what is happening.
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Reflection: In whole group, ask students to reflect on how this strategy worked for them. Ask questions like these:
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How did the illustrations help you imagine important details in the story?
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Did writing the details help you better understand the story?
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Why is it important to add details in writing?
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Were you able to find spots in your writing that needed more detail? What did you do to fix that?
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When will you use this strategy again?
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