MINI LESSON: Creating Dialogue

Creating Dialogue

Overview:

Students will write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

This mini-lesson can be used as part of a larger unit on narrative writing, as an exercise for students to properly identify and cite dialogue, or as a stand alone activity.

Objectives:

• I can tell a story or a make a point through dialogue
• I understand how, when, and why dialogue is used in writing
• I can create and share a piece of digital writing to an appropriate audience

Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3.B

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.3.B

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.7.3.B

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.8.3.B

Vocabulary:

• Character: someone in the story
• Dialogue: conversations between characters

Materials:

• One to one devices
• Scenarios for dialogue

Lesson Outline:

• Part One: Review

• Review dialogue writing rules and conventions

• Look at example peer mentor Posts or teacher mentor Posts and review the formats that can be used, paying attention to speaker tags, as well as the dialogue rules.
• Dialogue Between Friends by Hailee
• Conversation Between Yoda and Siri by Abdallah
• Conversation with a Cow by Caroline
• Short Conversation with a Penguin by Ms. Hansen

• Part Two: Assign an Idea Scenario (or have students choose)
• Have students browse the Dialogue Ideas Gallery for a scenario, or assign them scenarios for dialogue as you see fit. If assigning the scenarios, you may wish to create silly scenarios like the aforementioned examples, or choose to use characters/situations from a recently read novel, political figures and current events, have students create interviews, etc. Create a custom Idea or multiple Ideas for this assignment from your teacher account.
• To share specific Ideas to students, switch on the “Show On Student Home Page” button from the bottom of the Idea and/or use the Share To Group button to Feature them in your class Group(s).

• Part Three: Write & Publish Posts
• If students choose an Idea from the Dialogue Gallery or from an assigned Idea option, simply have them click the big blue “Write About” button to get started creating their Post.
• If students are choosing or being assigned an original Idea, give them an allotted amount of time to find an image to accompany their Posts (images can be found at: photosforclass.com), create their Posts from scratch and write their dialogue in the empty text field.
• When the time is up, have them publish their Posts so their classmates can see what they created!

Enrichment/Extensions:

• Students can use the audio feature to record their dialogue and even dramatize it! Read/Listen to a student mentor post with dialogue recorded- press the ‘play’ button at the bottom of the Post.
• Students can leave Comments on Posts from their classmates, offering positive feedback and/or suggestions
• Students can share their work to the Storytellers Group and read and comment on the Posts of fellow classmates and student writers.

Accommodations:

• Create a custom mentor Idea which uses the Description area to provide step-by-step instructions or links to instructional references (ie skill videos, visual aids, etc) specific to your class needs.
• Use the audio tool to record instructions when creating the Idea. You can read the Idea and Idea Description text out loud so students can listen and replay them as needed.
• Modify the lesson to include small groups and be sure to follow provided personalized accommodations based upon any student’s Individualized Education Plan (IEP).