Young writer's workshop: setting - teaching students how to create realistic settings in their written works

Write about what you know." Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, featured author in this workshop, shows us just how well this advice works. The setting of her book Shiloh (Atheneum, 1991), winner of the 1992 Newbery Award, is based entirely on a visit to Shiloh, West Virginia. While taking a walk there, she came upon the "saddest dog" she had ever seen, crouched among weeds along a creek. "I'd put out my hand," recalls Naylor, "and it would crawl away." Unable to forget the dog, Naylor wrote a story about it (followed by two more: Shiloh Season and Saving Shiloh), using what she knew to create an authentic setting.

The activities, reproducibles, and poster in this workshop are designed to help, students create believable settings in their own stories - so that whether they're writing realistic fiction or far-out fantasies, they can portray a time and place that readers will come to know, too.

Mini-Lesson: Conventions

Invite students to list some of the conventions they use in their everyday writing (capital letters, commas, separating words with spaces, and so on). Then, introduce a convention they may not be familiar with - the long dash (-). Ask students to find places in the final draft of Saving Shiloh (back of poster) where Phyllis Reynolds Naylor uses this convention. Write the following passage on the chalkboard or an overhead to help children understand.

To get to our house, you go through this place called Little - you'll know it by the church - and you keep going along Middle Island Creek, wide as a river, till you see this old falling-down gristmill.

1 Ask:

* What do you notice about the punctuation in this sentence? (Explain that the - is called a long dash.)

* Why do you think the author didn't just put a period after the word Little?

* How do you think long dashes help the meaning of this sentence?

* Encourage children to offer their own definitions for this convention. (It's a way to interrupt yourself in writing. You can use long dashes instead of parentheses or colons to insert a thought.)

2 Challenge children to find long dashes in their reading. As they get a feel for how writers use this punctuation, they'll find uses for it in their own writing.

3 Invite children to notice other conventions in the excerpt, for example, hyphens (two-bedroom house and sixth-grade boys). Use passages they point out as starting points for more mini-lessons.

STORY TIME

Does much of your students' writing follow a sequential path? In What a Writer Needs (Heinemann, 1993), Ralph Fletcher suggests encouraging writers to develop a "playfulness with time." Techniques he discusses include:

* flashback (Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlin);

* focus (The Beach Before Breakfast by Maxine Kumin);

* slowing time (using dramatic scenes to slow time or "lingering at the crucial moment").

To help students explore time in their own writing, Fletcher suggests having kids make timelines. Talk with students about their timelines to help them see how they can play with time, for example:

* Is there something that happened that is more important than other events? (This may be a place the child can slow down the piece and add emphasis with dramatic writing.)

* Is there an event that could be the focus of a more indepth story? (A moment in time can shape an entire story.)

* Are there events that remind you of things in the past or make you think about the future?

Win this Book!

"Once there was a poor old farmer with seven daughters. The land was so barren that he grew more rocks that rice." In The Dragon Prince: A Chinese Beauty & the Beast Tale (HarperCollins, 1997), Laurence Yep takes readers on a enchanting adventure. (See the poster for another Laurence Yep story plus a writing activity suggested by the author.)

For a chance to win a signed copy, send a postcard by October 1 to Workshop Giveaway, Instructor, 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. Include your name, grade, school address/phone, and a favorite tip/activity. All submissions become the property of Scholastic Inc. and may be used in any way in any publication.

Introducing the Setting

Follow the Ohio River to Friendly, West Virginia, go up a ways into the hills along Middle Island Creek, and you'll reach Shiloh, the setting for Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Shiloh trilogy (Shiloh, Shiloh Season, Saving Shiloh). Using her own visits to Shiloh as reference, the author re-creates this rural community in vivid detail, as she tells the story of a mistreated dog and a boy who will do anything to save him.

On the reproducibles (after Electronic Learning in Your Classroom pullout section), you'll find excerpts from early and final drafts of Saving Shiloh. Following are ways to use these pages to explore setting.

1 Give each student a copy of the final draft and read the excerpt aloud. Ask students to picture the place as they listen. Use this to launch a discussion of setting.

* How would you describe this place?

* How does the word lane help create a specific picture? What other word choices create vivid pictures?

* When do you think this story takes place? What are some clues?

* What kinds of things do you think kids do here for tim? What are some clues?

2 To help students understand how revisions can make a piece of writing stronger, compare the rough draft with the final. Use the questions on page 4 to lead a mini-lesson on revision.

3 Use the final draft as a modal for mini-lessons on ways writers use conventions to clarify meaning. (See page 4 for a sample mini-lesson.)

...and the Crowd Roared!

take it to the hoop, "magic" johnson take the ball dazzling down the open lane...now, came back down with a reverse hoodoo gem off the spin, & stick it in sweet, popping nets clean from twenty feet, right side...

- from "A Poem for Magic" by Quincy Troupe, from Weather Reports (Harlem River Press, 1984)

Dave Johnson, writer-in-residence of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative, taps into kids' love of sports to strengthen setting in their writing. Here's his favorite approach.

* Johnson starts by sharing "A Poem for Magic," above, about basketball great Magic Johnson. "The poem is electric," he says. "Children love it because the setting - a basketball arena - is very real to them." To help students create settings as alive as the one in "A Poem for Magic," Johnson suggests that they ask themselves questions about sensory details, for example: Where am I in this story? What time is it? What sounds do I hear?

* Point out examples of settings that pop up in kids' conversations about sports (for example, Yesterday we played football and the field was so wet that...). Challenge students to be aware of setting descriptions in all their dialogues, then to imagine the conversational stories they would tell about whatever they are writing about.

PUBLISHING TIP

"I tell children it can take five or six pieces of writing to get one they'd like to polish for publication. I liken the process of writing to exercising for an athletic event. For both experiences you work day after day to prime yourself for a moment in time."

- David Johnson is the author of Marble Shoot (Hummingbird Press, 1995), a collection of poems written from a child's viewpoint.

In Your Room

What do your students' rooms say about them? When Phyllis Reynolds Naylor leads writing workshops, she uses these real-life places to help students explore setting: What's hanging on the doorknob or over the chair? What sorts of things scattered about? Crammed on shelves? Phyllis then asks students to consider what different people would see if they came into their rooms: What would a 6-year-old notice first? A 70-year-old? In the same way that the setting of a story helps us understand characters, students will paint pictures of themselves as they describe their rooms.

Teaching with the Poster

Bring Tim Egan, Cynthia Rylant, Mary E. Lyons, and Laurence Yep into your classroom with this poster, featuring excerpts from four stories - Burnt Toast on Davenport Street (picture book); The Blue Hill Meadows (realistic fiction); Dragonwings (historical fantasy); and Letters from a Slave Girl (a fictionalized account of Harriet Jacob's life told in the form of letters) - plus visits with the authors and activities. Try the following teaching tips!

* As you read aloud each passage on the poster, ask students to close their eyes and imagine the time and place. Follow up by inviting children to discuss some of the details they pictured. Share comments from the authors and try the activities.

* Use the poster as the start of a student-created display that features passage from books and other writings that help establish setting. Be sure to have students credit their sources on quotes they post.

Senses & Settings

All morning you could hear the rattle of the machine as it went round and round, while the tall grass fell down behind the cutter bar in long green swatches. When you read this sentence from Charlotte's Web, can you picture the tall grass? Hear the mower, its blades whacking away? Smell the fresh-cut grass? Feel the warmth of a summer day?

All of these images contribute to the setting E.B. White creates in this classic. Encourage students to notice the ways White and other authors use words to create sensory images. Enlarge and make copies of the chart below. Have students fill in sensory-rich passages from stories they're reading, then share and discuss their entries with one another. As they write their own stories, students can start by creating sense charts of the settings for their stories.

CONFERENCE CORNER

Frank Minucci, a teacher at Riverside Middle School in Riverside, New York, finds that students often get caught up in the action of their stories, losing sight of the setting. By asking them to picture the places in which the action unfolds, he guides them in revealing details that strengthen their settings. Here's what-one students wrote, and the conference that followed.

...I walked up the steps and opened the door. I saw blood on the floor. Then I walked into the house and heard a growl.

Frank: Looks like something scary's happening here, Nick.

Nick: Yeah, this monster thing's going to reach out and grab me.

Frank: I'd like you to close your eyes and pretend you're going up the steps. What do you see?

Nick: Well, it's this really normal house. There's a railing on each side, and flowerpots, and a welcome mat by the door - it's got a pair of shoes on it - and the house is white with green trim, and you can see in the front window. The TV's on. There are other houses like this one on the street. You'd never think something scary would happen here.

Frank: I can really picture the house now. Why don't you write those ideas down so you don't forget them?

Technology News & Resources for Teachers

Compaq Offers Teacher Training Grants

Compaq Computer Corporation has teamed up with Electronic Learning/Instructor magazines and Scholastic to launch the Compaq Grants for Teacher Development, a competition to identify and support teacher training in technology. Grants of cash and Compaq technology products will be given to school or district teams (which must include at least one teacher) who have developed the most promising and effective ways to help teachers use technology well. For more information, see the special four-page Entry Kit in this issue of Electronic Learning in Your Classroom, or cheek the Web at http://www.compaq.com/education.

Win Software, Make Money with Your Computer Ideas

Scholastic Professional Books wants your best classroom computer ideas for inclusion in a series of teacher resources. The editors are looking for teacher-tested technology tips and projects in the following categories: displays (such as calendars and timelines); classroom publishing; e-mail learning; stationery/greeting cards; student research (Internet and CD-ROM resources), and computer-corner setup.

Scholastic Professional Books will pay $25 for each tip or project it uses. In addition, your name will be entered in a random drawing for a box of educational software, selected especially for your grade level.

To submit a tip or project, please include a description of your tip and/or project (specify the category, materials/tools needed, and a brief how-to) and your name, grade, school, address, phone (school/home) and e-mail address. Please mail all submission by October 1, 1997, to Scholastic Professional Books, Technology Ideas, 555 Broadway, New York, NY 10012, Attn.: Shawn Richardson. The editors will notify those whose ideas are accepted for publication or whose names are selected in the software drawing. All submissions become the property of Scholastic Inc. and may be used in any manner in any Scholastic publication.

Instant Info To Your Desktop!

It's got lesson plans, newscasts, and even a sense of humor - it's Educast, the free "news-you-can-use" service from CUC Software.

Developed as a one-stop resource for teachers, this ad-supported service downloads onto a your hard drive from the Internet, replacing the screen saver with various "channels" of information that are updated automatically every time you log onto the Internet.

Channels currently available are usa Today, Lesson Plans, Community Involvement, Professional Information, Education News and Marketplace. Publications and institutions that have committed to providing content include: Education Week, U.S. Dept. of Education, Learning Laffs, AskERIC, and Grant Research Newsletter.

For more information about Educast, contact Davidson School Sales at (800) 545-7677.

- Roberta Salvador

Children's CD-ROM Recommendations

More than 100 CD-ROM sources for ages 3-12 are recommended in CD-ROMs for Kids: Booklist's Bets, edited by Irene Wood. Taken from the pages of Booklist, the recommendations are arranged by age group and cover everything from curriculum subjects to word processing, graphics programs to reference sources. The price is $7.95 (plus shipping & handling); call (800) 545-2433, ext. #7.

Dear Diary

I'm a new computer-using teacher...

August 25

For years I'd been nagging Mary Sue, our computer lab teacher, to find more computers for my classroom. With one crusty Commodore - and 30-plus kids - technology in my room had been limited to break-time entertainment. But now things would be different, I told myself as I followed Mary Sue to the basement:

Oldies but Goodies?

The shelves were stacked high with outdated components donated by those eager to do a good deed (and take a tax deduction). They weren't the sleek little numbers I'd envisioned. They had the rounded look of an older car. One you might not want to be seen driving.

"How many can I have?" I asked.

"Four for now - six eventually, if you'll use them," Mary Sue said.

Use them? I had great plans.

We hauled the computers up three flights and stood - covered in perspiration and grit - at the door of my cramped classroom. "I'll help you hook them up when you figure out where you want them," Mary Sue said as she left. "Not near the board, though; the chalk will kill 'em."

Finding the Perfect Spot

I did not want the computers to be the focal point of my classroom. Instead, I hoped they would almost blend in - just one more exciting resource like the books, art supplies, and manipulatives.

So I put two of them against the front-window wall and two in the back corner. Each would be near an outlet - there were only two in the room - and kids using them would have enough elbow room. Each computer fit on an open-front desk, with the keyboard inside and the monitor on top of the CPU. A third desk between the pairs could hold a printer. Standing back, I felt ready to find Mary Sue.

My First Hookup

Running her fingers through her hair, Mary Sue sighed. "Once the heat goes on, you may have a problem... Well, let's get you going for the first few weeks and we can figure out a better place later."

But she was not about to let me off the hook when it came to connecting the cables. "Look at the cables, look at the machines, and use your head. Everything's got to come from the CPU, so start there." As I looked and hooked, we talked about computer-charged writing projects and research, math and geography - the possibilities seemed endless.

A Portentous Test Run

A half hour later we plugged in the power strip, threw the switch, and cheered when the monitors began to glow. But we weren't through just yet. "Uh, Mary Sue...look at that!" I pointed to the electric clock that shared the outlet. The hands were gliding effortlessly as always - only now, they were going backward!

"What does that mean?"

Ever unflappable, she replied, "I think it means you're in for some surprises." She was right.

Adele Schroeter teaches fourth grade at P.S. 321 in Brooklyn, NY.

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