“Wild Winter Stories” & Quotation Marks in Dialogue

Hello, division 4 families!

We launched our day with an invitation to try math enrichment questions reviewing using BEDMAS and introducing square root. (This math content shown on the whiteboard is above grade 4/5 and is optional learning.)

Next, we focussed on developing skills to help us write “Wild Winter” adventure stories.

Last week, students created artwork by cutting out photographs of themselves, glueing them to card stock, and illustrating “wild winter” scenes around the photos. Today, students made up and told stories to go with their artworks in small groups.

Then, we reviewed the parts of a story, recalling what we learned through making a “story map” of the “Beaver and the Echo” story a few weeks ago.

Next, I incorporated students’ ideas while modelling how to build a “wild winter” story using the story map template.

Then I modelled how I would flesh out the details of story map into a first draft of a story. I talked through my choices as I made them, especially around use of indents, paragraph breaks, descriptive language, and the correct use of quotation marks.

Students had a focussed lesson today on how to correctly use quotation marks, and we discussed the purpose, some challenges, and some tips of writing dialogue in stories.

As well, I introduced a helpful “Story Proofreading and Editing” checklist I like use with students to teach them more skills and increased independence as writers.

We will continue writing, proofreading, workshopping, and polishing these stories this week.

Please note that students brought home their wonderful “Animal Paragraphs” today!