Writing About Reading

& Narrative Writing

Milestones
March 13, 2018
Our Focus Today
 Narrative Informational Opinion
Constructed
Extended Extended
Extended
Response Response
Response

4 points 7 points 7 points

 organization and  taking a position

structure  compare/contras  arguing which
 elaboration with t author prepared
focus on  main idea a better
characterization argument
• Schoolwide writing about thinking/reading (K-5)

• What are our writers asked to do as readers?

• What is the relationship between reading and

writing in terms of Milestones?
• Think about the writing and talking about
reading that is done in your school; what
are they doing?
• Math explanations?
• 1-2 sentence summaries?
• Response notebooks?

• Is this writing about reading advancing

your readers? Or….is it getting in the way
of the reading itself?
• Trust that talking counts as thinking
and you can do less writing if you
have accountable talk!
• Don’t fall into the trap of assigning
the writing about reading—don’t
always just tell students what you
want them to write about.
• Apply the same concepts of writing to
writing about reading
• Know your own teacher expectations
about quality writing about reading
• Teach writers how to lead into an
example from the text
• Teach writers to explain their thoughts
• What are students writing about?
 “The blurb on the
Thisback
parttold
of austext
thatis
read aloud in a 1st
these two friends are
grade class:
‘always there for
each other.’
How does this part
show how Frog
thinks about Toad?

Turn and Talk”

How could this type of talk

1.Translate into writing?

2.Prepare students for this?

8th Grade
Milestones
Narrative
 What do we
want
students to
learn?

What will
we do if How will we
they know if they
already learned it?
learned it?

What will
we do if
they didn’t
learn it?
The extended constructed-response items on
the EOG assessment will be worth four
points. For English Language Arts (ELA), the
student will respond to a narrative prompt
based on a passage the student has read,
and the response will be scored for the
Writing and Language domain.
• The student’s response is a well-developed narrative that fully develops a real or
imagined experience based on text as a stimulus.
• Effectively establishes a situation and introduces a narrator and/or characters .
• Organizes an event sequence that unfolds naturally.
• Effectively uses narrative techniques, such as dialogue and description, to
develop interesting experiences and events or show the response of characters
to situations.
• Uses a variety of words and phrases consistently to signal the sequence of
events
• Provides a sense of closure that follows from the narrated experiences or events.
• Integrates ideas and details from source material effectively.
• Has very few or no errors in usage and/or conventions that interfere with 4
meaning. Point
s
 Write a conclusion

Write a conclusion

Rewrite this part…more

descriptive
• Guided Reading
• Independent task
• Minilesson teaching point
• Gradual Release over a week
 • Text Level Goal: Infer
characters’ feelings
and motivations
through reading their
dialogue and what
Level
other characters say
R about them
Level
S
• During Modeled Reading the teacher
reads aloud from a complex text (above
grade level) in a whole group setting.
• Teaching Point: “Today I want to teach Level
you that another way readers grow T

significant ideas about a character is to

notice anything the author spotlights. →
“……If the author repeats something over and over, or
describes something at great length, or otherwise
emphasizes something, readers realize the author has
done this on purpose and think, ‘Why?’”

Sistine

• Pink frilly dress

• Named after a famous chapel
• Her words sound strange (she
speaks differently)
• Angry eyes
Modeled

Guided

Independent
• What is the LITERACY goal?
• What does the reader need to do?
• What does the writer need to do?
• What needs to happen during the
GRRM components?