Christine A. Elmore
Did you know that the author:
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grew up and lived in a poor section of New York City
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kept warm by sleeping on a cot next to a coal stove
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drew pictures of small houses and people from many lands directly on his family's kitchen table
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would often climb to the top of his apartment building to look out at his neighborhood
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often had to confront gangs of bullies in his neighborhood. Once he showed some bullies some of his paintings and they started to treat him better
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loved reading art books
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earned a quarter for painting a sign for a candy shop
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decided to run away from home but came back the same night
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often saw homeless men on the street huddled around a fire to keep warm
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grew up in a family that always worried about having enough money for food and rent
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Once again, our author study will begin with a discussion of the above biographical facts and will be followed by a presentation of Keats' life and works as detailed on the display board. Then our book study will begin.
Anecdote
Keats worked illustrating 25 books for other writers for almost 10 years. Never during that time was there a story with a black child as the hero. He decided that when he wrote his first book, its hero would be a black child. One day in his art studio he came upon a
Life
magazine picture of a young boy form rural Georgia. He was impressed by the strong resolve in the boy's eyes and decided to use him as the model in his first book,
Snowy Day
.
Snowy Day
This is a story of a young African–American boy named Peter, who experiences all the excitement of a snowy day—walking in the crunchy snow, building a snowman, watching a snowball fight and wishing he could participate in it. He even takes a snowball home hoping to save it for the next day.
Anecdote
As a child Ezra often felt invisible and that nobody at home really paid much attention to him except when he drew something. He got the idea to run away from home from a story he had read in school. Like that boy he decided to carry his bundle of belongings on a pole. To his surprise, instead of discouraging him from leaving, his mother responded by tying the bundle tighter for him and then resumed scrubbing the floor. His adventure was short–lived when he ran into bullies, darkness fell and he started to get hungry. He had to plead at his apartment door before his parents would let him back in.
Peter's Chair
Peter is having trouble adjusting to the newest member of his family, a baby sister. He tries to hide his favorite chair because he fears his parents will paint it pink and give it to her. He decides to run away, taking his dog and a shopping bag filled with cookies and dog biscuits. He only gets as far as the front of his building and stands there for awhile. Later he sneaks back in and soon reveals himself. He decides he will give his chair, which he no longer fits into, to his sister and will even help his dad paint it pink.
Anecdote
Ezra lived in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn where every block had its own gang who jumped on trespassers. He often relied on his older brother Willie to stand up to them and scare them off or take them on. Willie was known to give a mean wrist burn to opponents. But the day Ezra ran away he was alone and he came across a group of bullies on the street who knocked him down and grabbed his bundle of belongings. Later that same evening he found himself running away from another gang on another street.
Goggles
In this story Peter and his friend Archie find a pair of yellow motorcycle goggles which they are delighted with. A gang of bigger boys tries to bully them into handing them over. Brain over brawn wins out as the two boys very deftly elude their would–be tormentors.
Anecdote
One day Ezra heard harmonica music coming from a neighboring apartment. The man inside shouted for him to come inside. Ezra soon realized that the man was blind. As the weeks wore on, he took many spring walks with his newfound friend and was surprised with how much the man noticed (the spring wind, the smell of fresh budding leaves) about his surroundings even though he could not see.
Apt. 2
Sam and Ben hear the sweet sound of harmonica music drifting through the hallways of their tenement. At the end of their search for the source of the music they find a blind man who does his seeing through his ears. They become friends and agree to take a walk together the next day.
Section 6: Telling Your Own Story
We have learned about the lives of three well–loved authors by examining their stories. As we prepare to write our own life stories I plan to begin teaching writing by putting on my storyteller hat and telling stories from my life. Kate Bartley, a first–grade teacher, describes the purpose of this in the book,
Guiding K–3 Writers To Independence'
by Patricia L. Scharer and Gay Su Pinnell. She wants her students to know "that they are telling a story to an audience and it is their responsibility to captivate their listeners by sharing real–life stories and telling them with panache!" (p. 35–36) My goal is to help children realize that storytelling supports story writing.
After telling my story I will create a simple title for it like 'My Pet Story'. I will keep the titles generic so that they reflect universal themes that my young writers can connect to and consider writing about. Each title will be charted on a poster entitled 'Topics We Can Write About'. In the following days I will move from telling my stories to having willing students tell theirs to the class. This exercise promises to be a meaningful one because they will be telling stories that have really happened to them—ones that they can more easily supply story details to and that they are emotionally invested in it. Lesson Plan 1 will describe one way to help a child organize the details of the story before writing which I have adapted from a lesson described in Megan S. Sloan's book
Teaching Young Writers To Elaborate
. (p. 40–42)
How can one begin writing his/her life story? The first logical step is to jot down possible memories, people and things from your life. In this unit I will use two of the planning strategies suggested by Ralph Fletcher in his book,
How To Write Your Life Story
, with my class. Each of these approaches will help the young writer "to dig up the raw clay for your life story." (Fletcher, p. 18).
The first strategy involves brainstorming a list of possible memories and then highlighting 5–6 key moments. I will impress upon my class the importance of selecting events that produce a vivid and colorful story that will engage the reader. These events can be placed on a simple timeline that might look like this:
Born______________________________________________________________Now
The second planning–for–writing strategy is to create a heart map, originated by poet and teacher, Georgia Heard in her book,
Awakening The Heart
. On this map, which is shaped like a heart, the writer includes in both pictures and words, events, memories, people and things that are close to his/her heart. It is important to note that this can be an organizer that one fills up over time as more ideas come to mind. See Lesson Plan 2 for further details on helping children create a heart map.
Compressing prose is the trick of good writing and can be effectively facilitated by offering the young writer a frame into which he writes his life story. Forcing it into a frame is part of the creative process. Once the student has selected some events from his life he is ready to mold the clay into his story. Fletcher, in his afore–mentioned book, describes different forms that a writer can use in presenting his life story. The vignette or micro–memoir is a short literary sketch that describes an aspect of one's life (like your name). A student can opt to focus on using one vignette or a series of vignettes to tell his story. When using this form the writer will need to keep his description brief yet vivid.
The second form is shorter than the vignette and is called a snapshot, consisting of only a few sentences or one paragraph. Barry Lane, in his book
But How Do You Teach Writing?
describes a snapshot as "a picture from a camera that has more lenses. It can smell and hear things as well as touch things." (p. 155). Using this form a student describes each memory and is very selective about which details he chooses.
With either form it will be essential to cohesively pull your story together. Fletcher suggests using a photograph at the beginning of each chapter which thus provides the "connective tissue" for your life story. (p. 41)
A third form is poetry and I have chosen the instant bio–poem format for my first–graders having had a great deal of success with it in the past. The form looks like this:
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I wish____________________________
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Like______________________________
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And I dream_____________________
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I am______________________________
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I used to_________________________
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But now I________________________
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I seem to_________________________
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But I'm really____________________
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It is amazing how poignantly this poem can describe a child and his/her experiences. Lesson Plan 3 will describe how to teach children to write a poem about their lives using this format.
During this time of planning and finding our own voice for writing I will return to Joan Lowery Nixon's aforementioned book and read excerpts to the class which describe a few elements of good writing. The first one is using precise verbs to describe action in your story. In writing about a life–event the writer needs to show not just tell. Melia's mom advises her to "think of words that
show
what is happening. You'd use words that let people see what you see." (p. 3)
A second element of good writing is to begin with an interesting lead: asking a question, using a sound, using dialogue or beginning with an action. Melia's mom answers her query of how to start a story by telling her to begin "with something interesting, so people would want to know what happened next." (p. 10)
The book ends powerfully with Melia's mom telling her that the most important ingredient of all for good stories is that they "belong to you because they'd be a part of you." (p.14) A book that exemplifies this philosophy is
The Best Story
written by Eileen Spinelli. In the story the young female writer starts off taking the ideas of various members of her family in writing her story for an upcoming contest. But no one is satisfied with the end product, least of all her. Near the end of the story her mom suggests to her that the best story is one that comes from your heart. The young writer finds her own voice, writes her story and is content to know that the story is her own regardless of whether she wins the contest or not.
We all have stories from our own lives to tell and by thoughtfully and skillfully sharing our life–experiences we can both learn from and teach or entertain others.