MIDDLE SCHOOL ENGLISH INSTRUCTION: Unit 6, Lesson 2 6
Focus of the lesson: SOL writing domains and definitions—composing
Writing done for SOL assessments at grade 5, 8, and 11 is scored in three large categories called domains. For each domain, scorers focus on certain features of the writing and then, based on the amount of control that the writer exhibits for each of the features in the domain, awards a score of:
· 1 (little or no control of the features of the domain)
· 2 (inconsistent control of most features)
· 3 (reasonable but not consistent control of most features)
· 4 (consistent but not necessarily perfect control of the features of the domain)
This lesson will focus on the Composing domain.
Having completed your prewriting, you will begin to draft your paper, which will be a personal narrative. Your paper will consist of—
· An opening paragraph that introduces your paper and sets up your central idea
· A body of 2-3 paragraphs that support and develop your main idea with carefully chosen information (elaboration)
· A concluding paragraph
The narrative approach, more than any other, offers writers a chance to think and write about themselves. When you write a narrative essay, you are telling a story. Narrative essays are told from a defined point of view, often the author's, so there is feeling as well as specific and often sensory details provided to get the reader involved in the elements and sequence of the story. The verbs are vivid and precise. The narrative is
Since a narrative relies on personal experiences, it often is in the form of a story. When the writer uses this technique, he or she must be sure to include all the conventions of storytelling: plot, character, setting, climax, and ending. It is
1. Central idea
Find a generalization which the narrative supports. The generalization will be the central idea of your essay and will say something that the narrative itself then illuminates or shows to be true. This generalization can be quite personal; it does not have to capture a truth about humanity as a whole or about the essence of the human condition. It simply needs to capture a truth about your life and use the narrative experience to illustrate its importance to you. In this way, it then has meaning to the readers as well. In your paper, your central idea does not have to be explicitly stated; however, if someone had to sum up your paper in one sentence, that sentence would closely the resemble the central idea that you developed in your paper.
2. Elaboration
Your essay will be filled with details that are carefully selected to explain, support, or embellish the narrative. All of the details will relate to the main point you are trying to make.
NOTE: If you have not generated enough information in your prewriting to support your main idea, you may have to do additional prewriting.
3. Organization
Usually, the organization of a narrative essay is chronological. The writer may also employ flashbacks.
4. Unity
The writing has a consistent point of view—usually first person. Parts of the paper and sentences within the parts are connected by transitions to create a flow. The paper is strongly focused around the central idea and does not contain irrelevant information.
ON PAGES 3-6 ARE TWO SAMPLES OF PERSONAL NARRATIVES. READ THESE PAPERS BEFORE YOU PROCEED WITH YOUR PAPER.
SAMPLE PERSONAL NARRATIVE #1
The braces on my teeth were the reason my parents said no to girls' summer softball. Never mind that there wasn't much else to do in our rural valley town while the sun was busy killing off all the grass. Never mind that summer was softball, or how badly I needed to belong. "That's my fur coat you're wearing on your teeth," my mother said. "That's my trip to Hawaii for the next ten years. I won't have it be all for naught." So I didn't beg to play, and I didn't ask again. Instead, I became a lone figure circling the playing fields on my cousin's outgrown bike, the silver in my mouth weighing me down like a debt I'd never be able to repay.
Late afternoons I rolled my bike down the driveway and began my rounds behind the backstops of forbidden softball worlds, steering a crooked path over chalky beds of broken eucalyptus and bricks of hardened earth. Past the pop-up fouls and sprained fingers of the fifth and sixth graders. Beyond the line drives and sifting grit of junior high girls sliding into the bags. Around the wide perimeters of the high school, where older girls stretched silk-screened shirts across stiff new bras and wore cut-offs trimmed to the water line.
Everywhere I rode were the sounds of me being left out. Even from the silent covered walkways of the primary school I could hear the children I'd known since kindergarten growing up without me. I skimmed past the windowed doors of my first and second grade classrooms, looped around the monkey bars, crisscrossed the buckled asphalt playground where I'd learned to play jacks and shoot marbles with these same girls. I practiced the slalom around naked stands of tether ball poles, traced the foul lines for dodge ball and foursquare with my wide balloon tires. Time had moved me beyond these innocent games of the past, and I was exiled from all relevant contests of the present.
Because I couldn't lay claim to softball, I held no hope for a future inside those tight little knots of comrades whose lives intersected on the dying lawns of summer. I didn't belong to them. I didn't belong to anyone or anything but a self-sacrificing mother and a mouthful of costly orthodontia. I rode until the games were finished, the diamonds settled in dust. I rode my tires bald.
The summer I turned fifteen, the bands came off my teeth and I was fitted with a plastic retainer that clung to the roof of my mouth like hot grilled cheese. While the other girls were signing up for softball and oiling down their mitts, I applied for a job at the hamburger stand at the four-way stop in town. I had a work permit and a good reference from my school counselor, but what appealed to Floyd most about hiring me was that he wouldn't have to make my schedule around softball.
As the days fell away and evenings turned to dusk, I watched whole neighborhoods of kids spill out of station wagons and pick-up trucks to form ragged lines at my takeout window. They pushed and pulled at each other, picked at scabs on their elbows, and whether or not they'd won that night, threw their caps to the sky in a fountain of team color. Their energy broke through the portals of the Frostie like anxious bees breaching the screen to orbit the root beer taps. For that one hectic hour, I too, tasted the sweetness of softball, fielding orders for hot dogs and firing off chocolate-dipped cones as if I were pitching for the major leagues. But then the rush was over, and I was left alone with a tired old man to flush out the ice cream machine and pick up the trash and chase sugar-sick insects with a dirty plastic flyswatter.
I was thirty-two years old before I played on a softball team, a women's league in San Francisco that promised "noncompetitive fun for inexperienced players." I borrowed a friend's mitt and bought a pair of canvas shoes with rubber cleats, took a bus to practice and worried about getting hit in the mouth.
The women on my team spit and swore, smoked cigarettes, iced down swollen knees with cold cans of Bud. They didn't care that I swung at the ball with my eyes closed, that I was afraid to get under a fly. Never mind that I stood in right field and wept like there was no bottom to my well of sorrow and joy. "A team is a team," they said. "We're glad you're here."
As we crowded into the coach's Toyota after our first big game, I burrowed into the warm tangle of arms and legs like a contented pup. A steamy mix of wet grass and women's sweat rose inside the car, brewing in the afterglow of softball. Someone popped the last Bud and as it passed from hand to hand, I inhaled the tangy, fermented scent of a team that finally belonged to me. I ran my tongue along the edges of my mother's fur coat and tasted the beer on her tickets to Hawaii.
SAMPLE PERSONAL NARRATIVE #2
I've been in lots of diners, and they've always seemed to be warm, busy, friendly, happy places. That's why, on a recent Monday night, I stopped in a diner for a cup of coffee. I was returning home after an all-day car trip and needed something to help me get through the last 45 miles. I'd been visiting my cousins, with whom I try to get together at least twice a year. A diner at midnight, however, was not the place I had expected—it was different, and lonely.
Even the outside of the diner was uninviting. My Escort pulled to a halt in front of the dreary gray aluminum building, which looked like an old railroad car. A half-lit neon sign sputtered the message, "Fresh baked goods daily," reflected on the surface of the rain-slick parking lot. Only half a dozen cars and a battered pickup were scattered around the lot. An empty paper coffee cup made a hollow scraping sound as it rolled in small circles on one cement step close to the entrance. I pulled hard at the balky glass door, and it banged shut behind me.
The diner was quiet when I entered. As there was no hostess on duty, only the faint odor of stale grease and the dull hum of an empty refrigerated pastry case greeted me. The outside walls were lined with vacant booths, which squatted back to back in their black vinyl upholstery. On each black-and-white checkerboard-patterned table were the usual accessories—glass salt and pepper shakers, ketchup bottle, sugar packets silently waiting for the next morning's breakfast crowd. I glanced through the round windows on the two swinging metal doors leading to the kitchen. I could see only part of the large, apparently deserted cooking area, with a shiny stainless-steel range and blackened pans of various sizes and shapes hanging along a ledge.
I slid onto one of the cracked vinyl seats at the Formica counter. Two men in rumpled work shirts also sat at the counter, on stools several feet apart, smoking cigarettes and staring wearily into cups of coffee. Their faces sprouted what looked like a daylong stubble of beard. I figured they were probably shift workers who, for some reason, didn't want to go home. Three stools down from the workers, I spotted a thin young man with a mop of curly black hair. He was dressed in new-looking jeans with a black Gap polo shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. He wore a blank expression as he picked at a plate of limp french fries. I wondered if he had just returned from a disappointing date.
At the one occupied booth sat a middle-aged couple. They hadn't gotten any food yet. He was staring off into space, idly tapping his spoon against the table, while she drew aimless parallel lines on her paper napkin with a bent dinner fork. Neither said a word to the other. The people in the diner seemed as lonely as the place itself.
Finally, a tired-looking waitress approached me with her thick order pad. I ordered the coffee, but I wanted to drink it fast and get out of there. My car, and the solitary miles ahead of me, would be lonely. But they wouldn't be as lonely as that diner at midnight.
ACTIVITY 6-2-1
óNow it’s time to write your rough draft. In this part of the process, you will get your ideas and information down on paper in roughly the same format you intend to use for the final, polished draft. Do NOT worry about spelling, punctuation, etc., while writing this draft. You will deal with these issues during the EDITING phase of the writing process.
Before beginning to write, access the graphic organizer at the following link. This will help you to organize your thoughts.
GRAPHIC ORGANIZER FOR TOPIC, AUDIENCE, PURPOSE