Dialogue= Emerging First Grade Playwrights

1. Dialogue= Emerging First Grade Playwrights The topic of our teacher demonstration lesson today: Writing Dialogues

2. Essential Question How can we teach students how to write dialogue in various content areas?

3. Lesson Objective Students will be able to write dialogue in various content areas by creating their own plays, stories, poems, etc.

4. Writing Across the Curriculum Writingisa greattooltoteach,reinforce, and assessthecontentthatisbeingtaught in thedifferent curricular areas. As children are learningtowrite, they can use thestrategiesthey are incorporatingintotheirwritingpiecestodemonstrate in purposeful and meaningfulwayswhatthey are learning. As teachersweneedtopossess a hugereportoireof strategiestohelpourstudentsmasterthecontentbeingtaught in thedifferent curricular areas. One of thosestrategiesis dialogue writing.

5. Dialogue Writing Writingdialogue can be a powerfultooltoteach/assesscontentacrossdifferent curricular areas. “Writingshouldbeanimportantpart of each social studiesteacher’sinstruction.” (Boyler, 158.)

6. Classroom Plays Adult or Child Direction Study in Salt Lake City, Utah Which is more effective for the acquisition of skills across the curriculum?

7. Mrs. Z’s Little Ladybugs’ First Classroom Play 2009-2010

8. “Neighbors in Space”

9. Adult Directed? Adult Supervision – This is where adults are considered Co-opers Unfortunately, adults tried to control and transmit ready-made plans instead of allowing the students to mind-storm, imagine, and create.

10. Kid Co-Opers “One child stated, “You’re supposed to practice a play, else if you don’t practice a play, you’re gonna go out and do it with someone just doing this: doo-da-doo-doo (acts goofy). It’s not going to be nothing.” (Baker-Sennett, Matusov, and Rogoff 1012)

11. Mindstorming “In mind-storming, children explored ideas for characters, lines, and movement without co-coordinating them into themes, improvisationally bouncing off each other’s ideas. They often started by developing characters as they tried on costumes and experimented with props, which led to develop germs of ideas about dialogue lines and themes of episodes as they brought their characters together in mind-storming.” (Baker-Sennett, Matusove &Rogoff, 2008)

12. Benefits of Kid Co-Ops Benefits of Kid Co-Ops • Students learn leadership qualities and then they also learn how to work cooperatively. • They plan procedures for putting the play/production all together. • They direct and perform. • Through the performance they demonstrate content and skill acquisitions that they have attained through instruction.

13. Script-writing for First Graders? You may ask, “How can we teach students to write scripts and become playwrights of content learned in curriculum taught?” Students can learn how to write these scripts by developing characters, learning how to write dialogue, by their implementation of inferences, plot, and sequence.

14. Teacher’s Impressions of the Kid Co-Oping “ She wrote that when she first viewed this session, her reaction was that it: was confused, noisy, and sometimes irritating. I was glad when it was over, and I was glad I was not present in the classroom [a substitute had been there that day]… Then I read the written transcript, and began to understand more of what happened between the kids and began to gain a perspective. I was still confused, however, and decided to view the video again. The second viewing surprised me enormously. I enjoyed it and I was not irritated at all . (Baker-Sennett, Matusove, Rogoff, 2008)

15. Result of Study “With comfort sharing responsibility with children- rather than ‘controlling’ their behavior or the product- adults may guide the children’s planning while still supporting the improvisational mindstorming and planning of themes and their details that we observed in the sessions directed by kid co-opers (Baker- Sennett, Mustusove & Rogoff, 2008).

16. Writing Dialogue for Second Language Learners • The same literacy strategies that are used with native speakers can and should be used with students who are second language learners. The expectations should be the same for both groups of students. In both cases, language is learned out of a need communicating one’s feelings, thoughts, and ideas. (Barone 50)

17. Learning Activity # 1 With a partner, discuss the image, talk about it, and write your thoughts, feelings or ideas using dialogue. Write a maximum of three lines. “Not unlike journals, diaries have long been the purview of historians searching for primary sources. It makes sense, therefore, that teachers use this genre to help students emphasize with the lives and struggles of people who they study in class, and to better understand events in history” (Boyer 160).

18. Learning Activity #2 Look at books on famous black-Americans. Fill in speech- bubble graphic organizer by drawing the characters and writing their dialogue. Share with the rest of the class.

19. Other Supporting Research According to Fordham, Wellman, and Sandman, “Considering a topic under study and then writing about it requires deeper processing than reading alone entails.”(Knipper and Duggan 462)

20. Writing to Learn According to Fisher and Frey, “Writing is often left out of content classrooms because of an overemphasis on process writing and the confusion between learning to write and writing to learn.” (Knipper and Duggan 462)

21. Write What You Know and Don’t Know Writing to learn is an opportunity for students to recall, clarify, and question what they know about a subject and what they still wonder about with regard to the subject matter.” (Duggan & Kipper 462)

22. Play Writing Can Be Fun “If the student believes that the information is significant and meaningful, then they will actually care about learning it. In my mind that’s what matters more than anything.”(Clawson, MacLean, Mohr, Nocerino, Rogers, and Sanford 31)

23. Fun Work “Examples students gave of fun were rehearsals, team and dance practices, and other individual long-term work that developed into a product of which they were proud. Fun meant achievement- real achievement.” (Clawson, MacLean, Mohr, Nocerino, Rogers, and Sanford, 31)

24. Jan Brett’s, “The Mitten Play”

25. Baba (Estefani)

26. Creating Greeting Cards

27. Closure Activity Write one or two ideas on a piece of paper that can be adapted to use with the age group of which you teach. We will share our ideas in a moment.

28. Readings and Research Baker-Sennett, Jacqueline, Eugene Matusov, and BarbaraRogoff. “Children’sPlanning of ClassroomPlayswithAdultorChildDirection.” Social Development17.4 (2008): 998-1018. ERIC. Web. 12 June 2010. Boyler, Tara L. “WritingtoLearn in Social Studies.” The Social Studies97.4(2006): 158-160. ERIC. Web. 12 June 2010. Barone, D. Thewritten responses of youngchildren: BeyondComprehensionToStoryUnderstanding. The New Advocate, 3.1 (1990):49-56. ERIC. Web. 12 June 2010. Cress, S.W. “A Sense of Story: InteractiveJournalWriting in Kindergarten.” EarlyChildhoodEducationJournal, 26.1 (1998): 13-17. antiochla.edu. Web. 12 June 2010. Crilley, Mark. “GettingStudentstoWriteUsing Comics.” TeacherLibrarian37.1 (2009): 28-31. ERIC. Web. 12 June 2010. Knipper, Kathy J. and Timothy J. Duggan. “ WritingtoLearnAcrosstheCurriculum: Tools forComprehension in Content AreaClasses.” The Reading Teacher59.5 (2006): 462-470. ERIC. Web. 12 June 2010. Mohr, Marian M., Courtney Rogers, Betsy Sanford, Mary Ann Nocerino, Marion S. MacLean, and Shelia Clawson. Teacher Research for Better Schools. New York: Teachers College Press, 2004. Print. 49-56. Cress, S.W. (1998, Fall). A sense of story: Interactivejournalwriting in kindergarten. EarlyChildhoodEducationJournal, 26(1), 13-17. Knipper, Kathy J., Duggan, Timothy J.(2006) Writingtolearnacrossthecurriculum: Tools forcomprehension in contentareaclasses. International Reading Association, 462-470

29. Vocabulary Learned- Poster Created from Wordle.net (Thank you Lorraine!)