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Mastering Dialogue: Writing Skills Worksheet
Objectives

Students will learn how to use dialogue in this unit. At the end of this lesson, students are going to:
- Examine how dialogue advances a narrative. 
- Create a cartoon with dialogue. 
- Practice using quotation marks to enclose speakers' words
- Give an illustrated story some dialogue.

Lesson's Core Questions

- How do strategic readers derive meaning from literary and informational texts? 
- Does the choice of books affect the way they should be read, and vice versa? 
- What is the objective of reading? 
- What separates effective and clear writing from the rest? 
- What appeals the most to the intended audience? 
- Who is the target audience of the text?

Vocabulary

- Character: Who the story is about. 
- Characterization: How the author shows who the characters are, what their personalities are, what they want, etc. 
- Dialogue: A conversation between people. 
- Narrative: Words that tell a story. 
- Plot: The order of events in a story. 
- Problem/Solution: A type of story structure where the author presents a problem and then gives possible solutions to it. 
- Setting: The time and place in which a story happens.

Materials

- overhead transparencies of several comic strips. Suggested site: http://comics.com/peanuts/ 
- illustration(s) from picture books
- Arthur Writes a Story by Marc Brown. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 1998
- a copy (or several copies of different versions) of a cartoon strip (without quotation marks) you created at http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/comiccreator/comiccreator.html 
- student copies of Proper Nouns sheet (LW-2-1-2_Proper Nouns)
- a teacher copy of the Proper Nouns key (LW-2-1-2_Proper Nouns KEY)
- a collection of several familiar texts that contain dialogue
- big book that contains dialogue
- sticky notes

Assessment

- Watch the students as they work on their comic strips to determine who needs more help or reteaching.
- Examine and comment on the finished comic strip from the lesson's third section.

Suggested Supports

Explicit instruction, modeling, scaffolding, and active engagement
W: Students get an understanding of dialogue and how to utilize it in a story. 
H: Using dialogue, students collaborate to create a comic strip. 
E: Students construct a comic strip on their own. 
R: Students converse with their peers about their ideas. Through discussion with you and their peers, they get the chance to go over and edit their practice with comic strips, stories, and quotation marks. 
E: You can determine whether to reteach or redirect students as needed to meet their learning needs by watching them. Anecdotal information regarding students' comprehension of dialogue and their capacity for small-group work can be gathered. 
T: Through their writing, students are able to demonstrate how they think. They can demonstrate their comprehension of dialogue by working on an independent project. 
O: After completing an introductory exercise, a large-group lesson (which is modeled), and an independent or small-group exercise, students can talk with you and their peers about what they learned. 
 

Teaching Procedures

Focus Question: What's the deal with dialogue in stories, and why is it important?

Part 1

Show a cartoon strip to start the lesson. The website http://www.gocomics.com/peanuts is a recommendation. "In this cartoon, who is speaking? What do they say to one another?" Allow for responses. "In cartoons and stories, dialogue refers to the exchange of words between two or more characters. The cartoonists used speech bubbles to represent the conversation. Let's examine one more dialogue example." Present an additional cartoon example and pose the same questions.

"What makes a storyteller include dialogue in their work?" Note down the answers from the students. Introduce to your students the idea that dialogue is a crucial part of stories because it provides the reader with additional information about the characters, setting, problem, solution, and plot.

"Let's take a look at another image." Show an image to the class that represents a favorite tale or one they've already read throughout the unit. "What could these characters be exchanging with one another?" Utilize the class's ideas. They'll probably quote lines or comparable speeches from the narrative.

Ask a student you have chosen to come up with. Act as though the learner and you are two distinct characters in the drawing. Engage in discourse (talk). "You will now have an opportunity to create your dialogue with a partner." Students should work in pairs to act like the characters in the illustration. Give them a few minutes so you can talk to them. When you get back to a large group, ask the students to share a little bit of their conversation.

Part 2

Give students more detail about dialogue. "Dialogue is a conversation between two or more characters. It helps to understand the emotions of the characters, provides additional details about the setting or events, and makes the story more interesting for the reader. Cartoonists use speech bubbles to enclose dialogue in their works. Let's take an example of a different book and examine how the author has used dialogue in it."

"Yesterday, we pretended to be characters from a story. Today, we want to write our dialogue and become authors." To prepare, we're going to check out Marc Brown's "Arthur Writes a Story." As we read, let's pay attention to how characters converse with each other and how dialogue advances the plot, problem/solution, character, and setting. At the end of the book, we'll review the components of a narrative.

Give each student a copy of the comic strip you made using http://pbskids.org/arthur/games/comiccreator/comiccreator.html.  To give your students a choice of which cartoon to write dialogue for, you might want to print multiple copies. Students can also use this website as a resource to practice dialogue on their own.

Allow enough time for the students to develop the dialogue for the comic strip. When they are done, they should discuss their dialogue with a companion. Save the conversations for use in Part 3.

Part 3

Get a storybook with dialogue that is large-printed or oversized. Read the narrative or the dialogue-containing passage. Ask the class, "Do the characters in this story speak to each other? " while they are gathered in a large group. "How can we be certain that they are exchanging messages? Are there any speech bubbles visible?" Await the replies. When speech bubbles aren't large enough to be used, authors have to find other ways to indicate that a character is speaking. "Does anyone have any idea how the writers convey speech?" Allow for responses. Perhaps a few pupils are familiar with quotation marks.

Encourage pupils to recognize citation marks in a narrative. "When a character starts speaking and when they stop speaking, authors indicate these events with quotation marks. When a character speaks, quotation marks, which resemble hanging double commas, appear around the words."

Go through the dialogue-filled large-print book. Draw attention to the story's use of quotation marks.

After the story, ask the students to use sticky notes to identify the quotation marks that begin and end a passage. Remember to emphasize that quotation marks are used in pairs. Every time someone speaks, there are quotation marks before and after them. "Quotation marks embrace the spoken word."

Show the students the Arthur cartoon you made in Part 2 to assist them in using quotation marks. Return and demonstrate the proper placement of the quote marks. When you are adding elements to your cartoon strip, make sure to explain where they should go.

"It's your turn to include quotation marks now. Go back and add quotation marks to the dialogue your characters are speaking in the cartoon you made yesterday. Keep in mind that you must use both opening and closing quotation marks. Make sure you give it your all." Gather up the finished product.

Language Skills Mini-Lesson

Flip back to the storybook, and have your students check which words are capitalized. Draw attention to the capitalized proper nouns, which are names of individuals, places, occasions, etc. As you write proper nouns on the board, ask the students to provide examples. This will help you assess their comprehension and understanding of proper nouns. 

Distribute the LW-2-1-2_Proper Nouns sheet to the class. Have them complete the first sentence, and then ask them to work with a partner to complete the second sentence. Students should complete the remaining sentences independently. A key (LW-2-1-2_Proper Nouns KEY) is available for you to check their work.  As a class, go over the solutions and discuss any questions that may arise.

Extension:

It is possible to teach students who are struggling with dialogue in small groups or one-on-one settings. They can return to enclosing their existing sentences in quotation marks. After that, let the students write their own dialogue. 

Give each student a copy of a brief narrative that isn't enclosed in quotation marks. When appropriate, students can add quote marks to their work to show that they have learned.

Mastering Dialogue: Writing Skills Worksheet Lesson Plan

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