Developing Dialogue
Students explore and create dialogue!
The Focus on Dialogue
This week we focused not only on teaching how to incorporate dialogue into narrative writing, but also giving our students the time to write their own. We assigned each collaborative team a topic, such as a mother and daughter in a car, to develop dialogue to be occurring. The students were able to get creative as far as what the conversations would be about and other factors that would affect the conversation. Through movie clips, we were able to show examples of how dialogue plays an important roles in plots. Next week the students will be required to pick a significant dialogue part of a movie, television show, or book, to dissect and explain the importance.
Isaiah's New Ride
Please take a few minutes of your time to read about Isaiah, a student at WDMS, and his need for a wheelchair accessible van. WDMS is currently having a school-wide coin collection competition to help raise money for this great cause. The homeroom with the most money collected per grade level will earn a free pizza party.
Morals versus Themes
While reading "Flowers for Algernon" one can learn a variety of truths about life and lessons. In order to correctly identify themes (truths about life) and morals (lessons), we assigned students the challenge of working with a partner to create one of each based on the novella. We were quite proud of the themes and morals that the students developed. Within our classroom we have them all displayed for students to view and reflect upon. Please ask your child which ones they discussed. You will be impressed!
Applying Dialogue Rules
Students are often nervous to practice newly reviewed/learned skills in fear of being incorrect. As you can see in the above image, we utilized dry erase page protectors to give the students to try and easily change answers when needed. After learning the correct ways to utilize and punctuate dialogue, we assigned students a partner to practice with. One handout was placed in the dry erase page protector for them to try on. After they were finished, a teacher would check their answers prior to them transferring the correct answers onto their papers in pencil.
"Flowers for Algernon" Complete!
After reading "Flowers for Algernon", we viewed the video adaptation while comparing and contrasting it to the written piece. To take it a step further, we also wrote and discussed the effects the changes had and if we liked them.