You can read the ideas I shared in my post on Writing Dialogue Part 1 by clicking HERE!
I am here to share with you the last couple of activities we did during our unit, and share with you freebie that contains all handouts found in both blog posts! Click HERE or the picture below to grab the freebie!!
After we discussed the rules to punctuating dialogue, students received a copy of the punctuating dialogue rules posters to add to their writing notebooks.
Students each received a copy of the un-edited version of the dialogue to glue into their writers notebooks.
I modeled the correct punctuation with the students by putting my notebook under my Elmo Document Camera so we could punctuate the paragraph together.
This can be a tough concept for many writers, so I am all for a gradual release of responsibility. They were not quite ready to do the editing on their own.
The next day during writing, we did a group "center-like" activity. I have to admit that this was one of those teachable moments. I thought that my students felt pretty confident with the indentation, punctuation and editing of their own dialogue, but after conferencing with a few students one-on-one, I was very surprised to see that a few still were not quite there. So, as we teachers do, I whipped out this little group "center" during my planning to allow my students a little more practice, and to get students out of their seats and reach those kinesthetic learners.
I quickly typed up a bunch of dialogue tags, quotation marks, commas, question marks, and un-edited sentences and threw them into envelopes for students to work together as a group. PFEW! At the rate I go, sometimes I swear I may have super powers!! ;)
The groups cut out the sentences and put them together to make a quotation that was correctly punctuated with an appropriate dialogue tag that matched. Then, they transferred each correctly punctuated quote onto a recording sheet.
This was an awesome opportunity for me to walk the room to get a better feel for those students struggling with this concept, and to decide whether or not we could move on to the final lesson on the next day!
The next day was the culminating activity to our dialogue unit, and the students were SUPER PUMPED because it involved comics! My students LOVE comics, so needless to say they were happy to practice another day of editing dialogue if it involved some cheesy 5th grade humor! If you don't get the Sunday Newspaper, you can find some great comics to print and laminate for future use HERE!
After teaching some of my students about comics, and how the author uses speech bubbles and no dialogue tags, (yes some had never read them-SHAME!) I put students into new groups. Side note: If you are looking to quickly assess your students understanding in a group activity, don't put them in mixed-ability groups. Instead make your groups high/low. Often times when your groups are mixed-ability, your higher students may come out as leaders and do all the work, leaving your students that struggle with that particular concept to sit back and let those high students do all the work. With a level playing field, every student will be required to work together and add something to the group!
Students were then to re-write the dialogue from the comics the "correct way" as if they were writing a story. They were to give the characters names if the names weren't stated in the comic, they were to add dialogue tags, and they could add 1-2 lines of a made up story to their comic strip.
They were to first write everything out on a piece of lined paper, then once each group had their paper checked by me, I had them transfer their work to an anchor chart/poster board.
I then posted them around the room for students to refer to throughout our writing! Here is the finished product from one group:
Thanks so much for stopping by! Enjoy the freebie!!!
