Do your students’ stories sound like this?
“And then we went into the woods. And then we heard a noise. And then we ran. And then we found a cave. We went in and then we went home and then it was time for supper and my friend my came over and we had so much. The END!!!!!!!!!!”
Or do they write mostly dialogue with SAID, ASKED, SAID, ASKED, and an occasional REPLIED verbs? But the dialogue never leads to any action like this?
“Did you hear that?” Sofia asked.
“Yeah,” Leo said.
“What was it?” Sofia asked.
“I don’t know,” Leo said.
“Should we run?” Sofia asked.
“Okay!” Leo said.
“Where should we go?” Sofia asked.
“Into that cave!” Leo said.
“Are you sure?” Sofia asked.
“I’m not sure. I’m scared” Leo replied.
Last week I posted a quick announcement inviting teachers to apply one of my favorite ways of teaching narrative writing (a framework I learned from Sally Humphrey), and I got an overwhelming amount of interest. So, I turned it into a workshop. We’ll have a lot of fun! I’ll be demonstrating how to do Joint Construction Using ARID. Yes, purchase orders are accepted. See syllabus and register at bit.ly/sfl-creative-writing.
See you next week!
About the Author
Dr. Ruslana Westerlund is CEO at Westerlund Consulting, LLC. She works with schools, districts, and educational organizations across the globe to support the implementation of high-quality instruction that integrates language, literacy, and disciplinary learning. She is also an Executive Officer at LLEN North America (LLENA). Her work focuses on making language visible through the Teaching and Learning Cycle, the WIDA ELD Standards Framework (which she co-authored), and evidence-based approaches that provide multilingual learners with high challenge and high support.
Westerlund Consulting LLC is a certified Woman-Owned Business Enterprise (WBE) providing professional learning, curriculum design, instructional coaching, keynote presentations, and strategic consultation in disciplinary literacy, multilingual education, and language-focused instructional design. The company partners with educational organizations to build educator capacity and improve equitable access to rigorous, language-rich learning for all students.
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