Our Foray Into The Personal Narrative

I actually began this post about 3 weeks ago, but just didn't publish it until now.

Yesterday's reading was Vera Williams' A Chair For My Mother. We used this book to further our example of a personal narrative for our writing unit. Williams does a really great job at stretching the story.

Today, just before writing our own personal narrative, we reread the excerpt where the narrator tells of the loss of her home due to a fire. We take notice of all the detail- great examples of stretching. While the point is to tell about the loss of her home, the narrator takes us through the events that lead up to her discovering the fire (the shopping, bus ride, tulips, etc.)

Personal narratives are somewhat daunting for Lyla. She feels that everything has to be a made-up story. She's extremely creative, so it was a little hard to get her just to think about what actually happened. Also she takes so long to draw. I am definitely going to require that drawing comes later from here on out.

Our preplanning really starts with the pictures. I make little booklets for her. This really helps the writing to be longer. This probably should have even more pages, but we could always add pages later. Here are the results.

		CLICK TO ENLARGE AND REDUCE!!!

On the first page, her illustration is of me walking her to the school bus. My DD thought it quite amusing to leave me headless. More importantly, she could have gone into detail about the walk down the driveway. Is it dark? Is it scary? What does it sound like? I wanted to add that, but this whole process was a little labored so we didn't. I may make it another assignment, although from what I've read, at this stage in the game I shouldn't give her topics. I may just do it anyway.

Flirting With Disaster

Over the weekend my daughter and I sat to do a reading lesson. I decided that she could read the first story of Days with Frog and Toad. This is a particularly easy book for her to read, but I chose it just to observe her skills for reading silently. Is she still comprehending? Do we need to talk about rereading until she gets it? She particularly enjoyed this reading because I gave her post-its to make notes while she read. I think that really made her feel like a big girl and the next time we go through a book together, I will model it for her.

Things go very smoothly. Even with jotting down little notes, she finishes too quickly. I was trying to get other things ready while she read. Anyway, she retells the story, and we discuss the conflict and resolution. She's on it.

It's time to write about the lesson she learned in the book. Since she's been working hard all morning, I let her choose whether she wanted to draw or write first. Of course she chose draw. Her reasoning being that the details of her drawing would help her to write. Good choice? Not so much. She gets really upset that her drawing isn't coming out the way she planned. To me it looks great, but she erases it all. Tries again, but she thinks her toad looks more like the frog in the story. This upsets her to no apparent end, and she cries and nothing I do seems to console her. I would think punishment, but she's genuinely upset that she can't do it.

What did I do? I called her dad. We both talk her down, and as you can imagine I could only get one sentence from her writing.

What could I have done differently? I am officially soliciting advice for how to handle these meltdowns.

Until next time...

Cheers,

Faith