Approaching the Unit

Unit Objectives:

Middle School writers will:

• understand the purpose, craft, and structure of memoir writing

• write a memoir that describes a memorable and meaningful experience

• use technology to write, revise, share and publish their writing

How to Approach the Unit

Writing Memoir is grounded in best practice in writing instruction, drawing from the extensive body of research on balanced literacy and the “writing workshop” model as well as the recommendations and concerns of educators “on the front line.” Teachers who participate are provided with a professional development institute, on-site mentoring and a unique set of web-based classroom resources for teaching and learning.

By logging on to the program’s website, teachers gain access to a complete set of lesson plans, accompanying classroom visuals and the Writer’s Room, a user-friendly area where they can collect and evaluate student work and help students publish for a real online audience. Technology-based resources are also provided for students. Their learning is scaffolded with amusing animated shorts, sample writers’ notebooks and other writing samples, and a series of curriculum-based multimedia activities and tutorials that are instructionally on track and, at the same time, highly motivating to high-tech teens.

Recognizing the heterogeneity of today’s classrooms, Writing Memoir offers flexibility. To help make the six-week experience successful, the curriculum gives teachers “breathing room” to re-teach, add their own unique lessons and modify those provided here in order to meet the specific needs of their students. 

Other important recommendations to teachers for ensuring successful implementation include:

• linking the writing workshop to the reading workshop, providing students with the opportunity to immerse themselves in the genre by reading memoirs written by adult and student writers as they create their own pieces.
• preparing students to participate in this unit by inculcating good writing practices such as building stamina by writing every day, and introducing standards for using technology in the classroom.
• preparing for the project by developing their own memoirs to serve as models for students.
• assessing student progress throughout the process by taking advantage of the activities and strategies included in the Writer’s Room. Each lesson offers corresponding strategies for evaluating students’ mastery of the particular skills addressed. Moreover, teachers are advised to consistently monitor student progress in individual conferences, via the writers’ notebooks and through the rubric created collaboratively by their class.

Lessons at a Glance

The unit offers six weeks of instruction and is suitable for a wide range of middle school classrooms.

Step 1: Brainstorm Your Ideas

This beginning stage focuses on developing students’ ideas for their own writing. Through a range of activities, students collect potential seeds for their own memoirs. At the end of this step, they submit focused ideas of the experiences they will use for their memoirs. 

Lesson 1.1: Recognize the Author’s Experience
After reading a mentor text that clearly demonstrates the features of a memoir, the class differentiates between events (those things which happened) and experiences (the author’s emotional interaction with events). In their writers’ notebooks, students describe a time when they experienced emotions similar to those described in the memoir. 

Lesson 1.2: Brainstorm Topics for Your Memoir
With teacher modeling as a guide, students use one or more approach to generate topic ideas for the memoirs they will write.

Lesson 1.3: Develop a Topic Web
Students develop a web through which they explore the general idea for their memoirs. After placing the general idea in the center of a web, they “drill down” to the details and then reflect on their brainstormed ideas in preparation for selecting the focus of the memoir they will produce over the next several weeks. 

Step 2: Organize Your Ideas

By now students have a general sense of their topics and an idea of what they will be writing about. They get the chance to sharpen their understanding of the genre and develop specific plans for their own writing. By the end of this step, they will be expected to have completed outlines of the memoirs they will write.

Lesson 2.1: Narrow Your Topic
Guided by teacher modeling, students return to their webs to identify the one moment from their general idea that they feel is most memorable. Students add details that relate to the moment they selected. This will be the focus of their memoirs.

Lesson 2.2: Organize Your Memoir for Meaning
Students begin to structure their memoirs by identifying the three essential parts of a memoir – the “memorable moment,” the “before,” and the “after.”

Lesson 2.3: Outline Your Memoir
Using an Outline Organizer, students put the events of their memoirs (the “memorable moment,” the “before,” and the “after”) in an order that allows them to communicate effectively. Emphasis is placed on adding details that will help them to show meaning and eliminate details that are tangential.

Step 3: Connect With Your Readers

Students develop a collection of strategies that will allow them to make their writing more compelling and understandable to their readers. They experiment with these techniques using ideas from their outlines. While the experiments may or may not make it into their actual memoirs, students will end this step with a collection of new ways to communicate meaning to an audience.

Lesson 3.1: Explode the Moment
Students use sensory details to describe a particular passage related to the memoir texts they are planning. In their writers’ notebooks, they “explode” one part of their experiences by listing the associated sights, smells, sounds, tastes and physical feelings and then transforming the list into a paragraph or two.

Lesson 3.2: Show Emotions with Action
Students learn to distinguish between telling the audience how they feel and showing through the use of action words. They select a particular part of the memoir they are planning and craft a paragraph or two that shows their emotion instead of telling about it. 

Lesson 3.3: Write Dialogue to Connect with Readers
Students learn how to use dialogue to help their readers share the experience communicated in the memoir. Using their outlines, students decide where dialogue might be effective for enlivening the story or clarifying meaning. They then create dialogue that is realistic and compelling.  

Step 4: Write Your First Draft

Students synthesize their ideas and tell their personal stories in writing. By the end of this step, they will be expected to have complete drafts of their memoirs. While focusing on writing the three main parts of the text, writers also build on the strategies introduced earlier. 

Lesson 4.1: Move from the Outline to a First Draft
Using their outlines as a guide, students begin drafting their memoirs. They may begin in the middle by drafting the “memorable moments” or by drafting the “before” sections (see Lesson 4.2). Students apply ideas and details from their outlines and techniques discussed earlier. 

Lesson 4.2: Draft the Beginning of Your Memoir
Using teacher modeling and their outlines as a guide, students draft the “before” section of the memoir, describing the context and events leading up to their “memorable moments.” (If the “before” section has already been drafted, this is the time to work on drafting the “memorable moment”).

Lesson 4.3: Draft the Ending
Students draft the “after” section of their memoirs, considering the following questions: What were my thoughts and feelings before the “memorable moment?” What were my thoughts and feelings afterwards? How can I show this contrast in the ending of my memoir? Students reread their drafted endings to determine if they clearly communicate the intended meaning.

Step 5: Revise

Students work with peers and the teacher to ensure that their memoirs convey the experiences and meanings they wish to communicate. Students revise their drafts for clarity of meaning, sequence and speaker. By the end of this step, they will have created second drafts.

Lesson 5.1: Revise for Clarity of Meaning
To revise in order to clarify meaning, students exchange their memoirs with peers who are not familiar with their work. Using a Peer Review Sheet, readers identify the events and experiences in the text, noting one thing that the author has done to make meaning clear and making one suggestion to help clarify meaning. Authors will then devise a written plan to improve their memoirs and begin executing it.

Lesson 5.2: Revise for Clarity of Sequence
Students check for clarity of the sequence of events in their memoirs. They make all necessary revisions, including adding “sequence” words to the text. After revising, students review their memoirs again to check that the sequence of events is clear.

Lesson 5.3: Revise for Clarity of Speaker
Students review the dialogue in their memoirs to check for clarity in organization and meaning. They locate the parts of their memoirs that include dialogue and determine if it is clear WHO is speaking and HOW they are speaking? They then make the necessary revisions.

Step 6: Edit & Publish

During this final step in the unit, students edit and proofread their memoirs for accuracy of grammar and spelling. At the end of this step, they celebrate their accomplishments by publishing their completed memoirs in the class Writing the City e-zine.

Lesson 6.1: Edit for Grammar and Punctuation
Using a guide containing proofing symbols as well as Microsoft Word’s Spelling and Grammar check, students look for errors in their work and begin to make the necessary corrections.

Lesson 6.2: Edit for Tense
After the teacher demonstrates how to review a memoir for consistency in tense, students review their own memoirs, highlighting all of the verbs and then checking the verb tense in each paragraph to ensure consistency.

Lesson 6.3: Publish Your Memoir
With the guidance of the teacher, students use the Writing the City tool to publish their memoirs online. They celebrate by sharing their memoirs in class.

Standards

The lessons in this project support the New York City ELA Middle School Performance Descriptions for writing a narrative account. (E2c)

According to the Standards, “The student produces a narrative account (fictional or autobiographical) that:

• engages the reader by establishing a context, creating a point of view, and otherwise developing reader interest;

• establishes a situation, plot, point of view, setting, and conflict (and for autobiography, the significance of events and of conclusions that can be drawn from those events);

• creates an organizing structure;

• includes sensory details and concrete language to develop plot and character;

• excludes extraneous details and inconsistencies;

• develops complex characters;

• uses a range of appropriate strategies, such as dialogue, tension or suspense, naming, and specific narrative action, e.g., movement, gestures, expressions;

• provides a sense of closure to the writing.”

Examples of narrative accounts include:

• A biographical account: 4a, 4b

• A fiction or non-fiction story: 4a, 4b, 5b

• A personal narrative: 4a, 4b, 5b

• A historical account: 1c, 4a, 4b

• A detailed travel diary: 4a, 4b

• A news account of an event, fiction or non-fiction: 4a, 4b

Getting Started

Carrying out Writing Memoir Day-to-day

Technology Set Up

There are many different technology components to the Writing Memoir unit. Prep & Tech is included at the top of every lesson in the unit. In that section you will see some suggestions for how to prepare the technology, classroom setup, and student materials for the lesson. Here is a list of computer hardware that you will need throughout this unit:

LCD projector and laptop: For many lessons, it is important to use a LCD projector and computer to display the animated programs and the website for students. When setting up a LCD projector, it is best to use a white screen or white board to display the projection. White boards (white dry-erase boards used in many schools instead of chalkboards) and Smartboards (interactive white boards that act like large touch screen computers) are often ideal for projection because they are usually set up in a place where students can see them easily.

Internet Connection: If the Internet connection in the classroom is inconsistent or non-existent, use the Writing Memoir CD to show the handouts, animations, and Think Alouds located in the Writer’s Room.

Speakers: If you are using a laptop, the speakers are not usually loud enough for all of the students in a classroom to hear clearly. It is helpful to connect a set of speakers to the computer before getting started.

Laptop Carts: When using a laptop cart, it is important to test each laptop to make sure the battery is charged and it functions properly. Always allow time for handing out and collecting the laptops. It is also helpful to assign a specific laptop to each student, pair or group. This way students can be held accountable for the equipment and can continue their work over the course of several class periods.

Computer Guidelines: Before beginning the unit, you will want to establish computer guidelines. Some basic rules for students are:

1. Never have food or drinks near the computer.
2. Always wait for instructions from the teacher before using the computer.
3. Never touch the screen of a laptop computer.
4. Always wait for instructions to turn a computer on or off.

Registering Students in the Writer’s Room: Students will need to create Writer’s Room accounts before beginning the unit. Each students must have an individual username and password for the Writer’s Room. This will allow students to contribute to online discussions and store their memoir drafts online. Students should create a simple username, such as their first name and last initial. They should write their username and password in their writers’ notebooks.

Student Release Forms: Parents will need to sign two release forms to allow students to participate in Writing Memoir. Included in Lesson 1.1 is a Student Work Release Form. This form allows Teaching Matters to showcase students’ work. Parents will also need to sign a release form created by your school that will allow students to post their memoirs to the Teaching Matters Writing the City online publication. This release form should reflect your schools’ policy towards online publishing.

Implementing the Workshop Model

Writing Memoir conforms to the conventions and steps of the writer’s workshop, including brainstorming ideas, getting organized, connecting with readers, drafting the piece, revising, editing and publishing. Within this context, lessons follow the workshop approach. Each lesson includes a 15-minute mini lesson followed by an extended time for students to work independently on their writing. 

The Mini Lesson

Each mini lesson introduces a specific skill in the writing process and builds on the past mini lessons. This instruction generally incorporates guided analysis of published texts, teacher modeling and/or modeling by our animated characters, JT and DD, recognizing that it is important for students to have models of polished memoirs and also to see the struggles and successes of the writing process itself. Therefore, during the course of this unit, teachers need to craft their own memoir texts and to demonstrate their own writing process as a model for students. 

Writer’s Work Time

Once each day’s mini lesson has been completed, students apply what they learned to their own writing. Most importantly, they have extended periods of time to write during every writer’s worktime.  This is their chance to try out new strategies, work through writing blocks, experiment with different approaches, and reread and revise their work. In short, writers need this time to craft thoughtful, polished memoirs.

Sharing

Each lesson concludes with an opportunity for teachers and students to review the main teaching point and to celebrate what has been accomplished. While each lesson in the Writing Memoir unit provides an example of how to share, it should be recognized that there are multiple ways to go about this important part of the workshop, depending on the task at hand, time available and needs of the class. 

A more extensive list of ways to share includes:

• Turn and talk followed by teacher report. Writers share ideas or drafts with partners for under five minutes while the teacher circulates to pick up what progress has been made. The teacher then reconvenes the class and reviews and/or lists what she overheard.

• The teacher reports on what she observed in class. As the teacher circulates or conferences during independent writing time, she finds one student who used the strategy introduced in the mini lesson to use as an example. She reports to the class what the student did and then asks everyone to return to their work to see if they have done the same. She concludes the lesson by telling the group how to execute that strategy in the future.

• The teacher reports on her own progress. The teacher recalls the teaching point and strategy emphasized in the lesson and returns to her own writing piece to show what she accomplished or could have improved upon.

• Mentor text. The teacher recalls the teaching point. Then she reads a few sentences aloud from a mentor text that hits the mark.

• Read aloud. The teacher recalls the teaching point and strategy emphasized in the lesson and asks students to return to their work to find evidence of the strategy. Students are asked to find one sentence that they are particularly proud of. She asks them to raise their hands (or equivalent) to show that they have one – there should be lots of hands. Then the teacher picks several students to read their sentences. The teacher concludes by offering praise, recalling the strategy one more time.

• Change partners. If students have been turning and talking to the same partner over time, it makes a real difference when they share their drafts with someone who has not been hearing their ideas evolve. This is particularly helpful once drafting begins and students begin to review one another’s work for clarity of meaning.

Collaboration with peers is integral to the “sharing” process. Students regularly talk through topics, compare struggles and successes, and peer review helps to create a classroom community of writers to which all can contribute and within which all can grow in expertise.

Celebrating

As the culmination of the unit, students publish their work online for their peers, communities, and parents. Teachers can customize the Writing the City class e-zine as well as elect to keep specific writing submissions public (available to the world) or private (available only to an approved community). Teachers and their students can select articles from class e-zines to submit to the Writing the City city-wide publication managed by teens for teens.