There are two sources of information on the Core Standards that are easy to confuse.

CoreStandards.org is the organization that initiated this push toward standards and their standards are what many state department of educations have adopted. The Appendix B lists “exemplar texts” and explains how to evaluate other possible texts. Usually Exemplar Texts are not required or recommended; they are merely example of what is considered exemplar. As the Core Standards are implemented, however, a state or local districts may “require” them, but that isn’t the case, as of now.

CommonCore.org is an organization partly funded by the the Bill Gates Foundation. They have written suggested curriculum maps based on the standards. They state: “The maps do not comprise a complete curriculum, nor do they prescribe how teachers are to teach the material included in the maps. The maps are curriculum planning documents that teachers can use as a resource for making their own more detailed curricula and lesson plans.” They state that the curriculum maps use most of the exemplar texts, but takes an additional interesting step. Authors with texts on the list are referred to as “exemplar authors” and other books by them are suggested.

The short answer is you need more prewriting. For either fictional or nonfiction essays, students need a rich prewriting experience to find the details needed for a great essay.

There’s one thing guaranteed to strengthen the details in your students’ narratives: sensory details. As human beings, we experience the world through our senses. Adding specifics about what you see, hear, touch/feel (temperature/texture, not emotions), smell and taste easily creates stronger essays.

The temptation is to think adjectives. Sure, sensory details will be about adjectives: red, loud, frigid, acrid, and sweet. But students also need to think verbs: dashed, squeaked, melted, stunk, and puckered.

An easy exercise is to ask students to write the senses along one side of a page. Then ask them to think about the narrative they are writing and write at least three sensory details for each of the senses. (My book, Paper Lighting, has a Sensory Details Worksheet to photocopy.)

Here are some guidelines:

1. Jot down ideas, not complete sentences. Words or phrases are fine.
2. Be as specific as possible.
   NOT: dog
   INSTEAD: German shepherd that limps
3. Try. Yes, depending on your situation, some of the senses are harder than others. Visual and auditory details are usually the easiest, with smell and taste the hardest. Push students to try to get at least something on every sense and for the strongest senses they can do more than three.

Once the students have done a sensory detail worksheet, they can start working on the first draft of a narrative. They do NOT have to use every sensory detail; they may think of other details as they write and can include them. This also works as a revision exercise.

Details for NonFiction

Details for nonfiction might also include sensory details. But you can also teach students to look for specifics in three areas:
<

li>Statistics. Numbers matter in nonfiction and while students research, they should be searching for relevant statistics.
• Proper nouns and jargon. Likewise, it’s important to use specific names for people, places or things. Often, a topic has jargon or technical vocabulary that lends specificity to an essay. The time to find these vocabulary words is during the prewriting and research phases.
• Facts. This is a catch-all category that includes any other specific information about the subject. Encourage students to find as many facts as possible during the prewriting and research phases.

Once students have enough facts, they’ll need to learn to use the facts. Refer to Paper Lightning for a great sorting exercise.
For more, on adding details through prewriting to fiction or nonfiction, see Paper Lightning.

Under the new Common Core Standards 3rd grade and up are writing narratives, including the use of dialogue. Dialogue is what is actually said by a person or character and is important to include in both fictional and nonfiction narratives.

Requiring proficiency in dialogue this early is new: for example, the old Arkansas Language Arts Curriculum standards introduced dialogue in 4th grade and concentrated on it in 7th and 8th, the only grades to specifically mention it. Now, it is required from 3rd grade on.

Common Core Writing Standards, grade 3, Text Types and Purposes, 3b.
“Use dialogue and descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings to develop experiences and events or show the response of characters to situations.”

Technical Stuff on Dialogue: Punctuation and More

1. Quotes: Use double quotation marks around the words a person actually says.

Punctuation at the end of a sentence in dialogue:

• Always goes inside the quote marks.
• No speech tag afterward. Use the same punctuation you always would.
• Dialogue is followed by a tag such as “he said.” In this case, periods are changed to a comma, but exclamation points and question marks stay the same.
2. Dialogue Tags: Most of the time, simplicity is best, just use “he said” or “she said.” Professional writers seldom vary from this and when they do, it’s for emphasis. It’s popular to teach students to use a variety of forms, such as these: he exclaimed, he shouted, he whispered. If you are doing this as an exercise in using a thesaurus, fine. Otherwise, don’t do it.
3. No Added Modifiers
   No adverbs. Also, keep the dialogue tags clean by not adding unnecessary modifiers. Adverbs and participles should be used sparingly, if at all. They must add new information or nuances that could not be added in other ways.

   NOT: “I’m cold,” she said (simply, boldly, honestly, quickly, etc.)

   No -ing phrases. The other construction that shows up is adding a verb-ing form (a participle).

   NOT: “I’m cold,” he said, (pulling on a glove, shoving a hat on his head, closing the window, etc.)

Tips for Teaching Dialogue

• Start with Graphic Novels or Comics.
  One idea for teaching dialogue is to use graphic novels. The dialogue, what a character says, is within the speech bubble. Use one panel from the comic and ask students to change it into a correctly punctuated sentence. For example, maybe a speech bubble has Superman saying, “They don’t have a chance!” Written as a sentence, it would look like one of these:

  Superman said, “They don’t have a chance!”
  “They don’t have a chance!” Superman said.

• Highlight the dialogue words. use highlighters to mark the words the character/person actually says. Then work to punctuate those words.

Outlining, or planning the structure of an essay or research paper, is part of the prewriting stage of essay writing. Prewriting is often neglected in writing a paper, but it can make a big difference in the success of the essay.

There are three times you can outline papers or essays:

1. Outline before you research. This prewriting essay outline shows the main topics that you expect to research for your paper. For example, if you are studying the bombing of Pearl Harbor, you could expect to find information on the geography of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese forces, the US forces, the state of the war, the attack itself, and the effects of the attack. This time the outline helps direct the research.
2. Outline after you research. After you have researched information for your paper, it’s time to sort the information and structure it in some logical way. This essay outline will probably be more developed and quite different from the first outline. The prewriting outline you write here will act as the blueprint for the first draft of the paper or essay.
3. Outline after the first draft. Outlining a research paper or essay is usually considered a prewriting activity, but it can also be used to revise. After an essay is written, put away the first outline you wrote and don’t look at it for this next task. Reread the essay or paper and outline what you actually wrote. At this point there are probably two essays: the research paper you planned and the research paper you wrote. Probably, these essays don’t match up, because it’s hard to write everything exactly right on the first try. Now, take out the first outline and compare. The comparison will give you a place to start revisions on the research paper.

Getting Started Outlining

Let’s assume you have researched the topics for your essay. Now, continue the prewriting process by sorting the research into categories. Read through the information and decide how to sort the information. It might fit onto a time line. Or you might sort it into categories. The specific categories will vary depending on the topic and the information you have gathered. Usually there are several right ways to categorize and you must think about what is best for your paper. Consider the assignment, the type of essay you are writing, and the audience to decide on the best categories for your essay. Also consider if you have information that doesn’t fit neatly into any category. This is a good time to set aside those facts because they won’t work in your essay.

Look at each category carefully:

• Do you have enough facts in each category to support your ideas?
• Does each category have about the same amount of facts. If you have 100 facts for one category and only 2 for the next category, you probably need to choose the best facts from the 100 and do more research on the later category.

Types of Outlines for Research Essays or Papers

1. Chronological outline. Using a timeline, outline the facts according to when it happened in time. Time order is the easiest way to outline: first, second, next, last.
2. Spatial outline. This organization is based on how things are organized in space. For example, you might describe a room this way: the north wall, east wall, south wall, west wall, floor, ceiling.
3. Topical outline. When you sorted the information, you put it into categories. Each large category is one topic to be discussed in your research paper.
4. Outlines for specific purposes. Persuasive essays often require a special outline. Depending on your grade level, you might just give reasons why you agree or disagree with a topic. Or, you might need to consider the opposite side of a topic and answer each objection. Compare and contrast essays need to consider the best way to organize the paper so the reader understands the differences among things or ideas.

First Draft of the Essay Outline

Decide on the type outline you need and put the information into the right categories. Label each category and use that label as one of the major points of the essay. Write a thesis statement that matches the facts and outline you created.

	Thesis Statement:
	I. Major idea or topic
		A. Major Sub-topic
		B. Major Sub- topic
	II. Major idea or topic
		A. Major Sub-topic
		B. Major Sub- topic

WRITING TIP: Paper Lightning: Prewriting Activities to Spark Creativity recommends an Agreement/Disagreement Wall for writing a thesis statement.

Revise the Essay Outline

Don’t stop now! You still have a couple important prewriting tasks before the essay outline is finished. Look over all the facts you researched. What facts are the most interesting and would catch a reader’s attention? Which facts give a good picture of the big ideas of the paper or essay? These facts are probably good ones for your introduction or conclusion.

You’ll wind up with an outline for your research essays or papers like this:

I. Introduction
		A. Interesting Fact
		B. Interesting Fact
		C. Thesis Statement
	II. Body
		A. Major idea or topic
			1. Major sub-topic
			2. Major sub-topic
		B. Major idea or topic
			1. Major sub-topic
			2. Major sub-topic
	III. Conclusion
		A. Interesting Fact

One last thing to consider in writing an outline is the order of facts under each of the main or sub-topics. Make sure you have each fact in the right topic. Within a topic think about how to put the facts in order so the reader will understand better.

Prewriting, especially outlining, happens best when there is lots of time available. The prewriting stage of writing is the time to think long and hard about your topic. Don’t rush the process of gathering information, sorting it and creating an outline for your research paper or essay. The more time spent on doing this step well, the better the essay will be.

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In teacher professional development classes this summer, I demonstrated using Rich Davis' PICK AND DRAW card game as a prewriting activity. The game has sets of images to help kids draw faces: face shape, eyes, ears, hair, mouth. Here's an example of how I use it: Kids are divided into sections with about 1/5 of the kids in each section. This could be kids seated at one large table, one (or more rows), or other logical division. Each group is given one of the cards from a set to work with.

Using Pick and Draw to Create a Character

1. Face Shape. Give each section one of the face shape cards. They must draw the shape large enough to cover at least 1/2 of a page, preferably about 75% of the page. They'll need a second sheet of paper to write on. After drawing the face shape, ask students to give their character a name. It must be a specific name with a beginning, middle and last name.
   Optional: if you're doing fairy/folk tales, a character might be a fantasy character such as a giant, ogre, magical frog, princess, etc.
2. Eyes. Each group receives an eye shape to add to their drawings. Ask students to write 3 things about the character's family.
3. Nose. Each group receives a nose shape to add to their drawings. Ask students to write 3 things the character hates or fears.
4. Mouth. Each group receives a mouth shape to add to their drawings. Ask students to write 3 things the character loves.
   Optional: Oral Storytelling – Ask students to find a partner. Each student will have one minute to tell a story about their character. The story must include something about the character facing something s/he hates or fears. This will make sure the story has conflict.
5. Hair. Each group receives a hair shape to add to their drawings. Ask students to write 3 things about where the character lives.
   Optional: Oral Storytelling – Ask students to find a partner. Expand the time allowed to one and a half minutes to tell a story about their character. With the longer time, the story must add more details about the conflict. Try to include something about the setting and make sure the story has conflict.
6. Write. Tell students they've had a lot of fun drawing and talking. But now it's time for quiet and writing. Give them 20-30 minutes (depending on grade level) to write. Explain that during this time, they must move their pencils across the page, no stopping. There's always a few students who want to write a couple sentences, then fill up the rest of the page with a huge, "The End." This is not allowed! They must write for the full time span.

CONGRATULATIONS! You have quickly and easily created a character, a setting and a story! Find more information on Pick and Draw card pack here.

Keys to making this work:

1. Specifics. Students must make a commitment to something specific at every point. No blanks. When they make these small commitments at each stage, they become interested and invested in the character they are creating. Push students to be as specific as possible at every point of the creation.
   • For example, push them to be specific about a character's fears.
     • Not: scared of dogs.
     • Instead: scared of German Shepherds.
   • Or about what a character loves.
     • Not: loves to eat.
     • Instead: Loves chili dogs with everything.
2. Speed. The whole activity should take about 20-30 minutes for the drawing and character creation and 20-30 minutes for writing.

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Prewriting for Persuasive Essays

Here’s the problem: We work with kids on their topic sentences to make sure they are clearly expressing an opinion; and we worry that the opinion is expressed in such a way that the reader can agree (or disagree) with the opinion. Can a reader respond with a “yes” or a “no” to the argument? The organization is strong and is backed up by some data. But still, the argument doesn’t sound persuasive, even to you. What’s going on?

Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the popular book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, have some insight on this problem. The Heath brothers are talking about popular ideas which are discussed in such a way that people will remember the idea and be convinced it’s true. They deal in popular urban myths:

Have you heard the one about Dave, who went to New York City for a conference, met a woman in the restaurant of the Hilton Hotel and he bought her a martini? Next thing Dave knew, he woke up in a bathtub full of ice – minus a kidney.

Why do stories like that convince us? Because of the specific details. It was Dave at the Hilton Hotel in New York City. Martinis. Bathtub of ice.

Research says, “It’s All in the Details.”

The Heaths report on a 1986 research study by Jonathan Shedler and Melvin Manis of the University of Michigan. (“Can the Availability Heuristic Explain Vividness Effects?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (1986), 26-36.) They wanted to know what could a lawyer do to make a case more convincing to a jury. They ran a simulation of a custody case, in which the jury had to decide if a mother was fit to keep custody of her seven-year-old son.

They used 8 arguments for and 8 against Mrs. Johnson. The difference was the level of detail, with those more detailed labeled as vivid: “As an example, one argument in Mrs. Johnson’s favor said: ‘Mrs. Johnson sees to it that her child washes and brushed his teeth before bedtime.’ In the vivid form, the argument added a detail: ‘He uses a Star Wars toothbrush that looks like Darth Vader.’”

The vivid arguments were the most persuasive, either in favor or against Mrs. Johnson.

Teach Kids to Use Vivid Details for Persuasive Essays

What this means when we write with kids is that they need to use the most vivid details possible. Specifically, when researching – during the prewriting phase – they need to look for these details and record them. When writing, kids should refer to these specific notes and work in as many vivid details as possible.

If you want to know more about persuasion – and have a bit of fun – read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

Prewriting Worksheets for Vivid Details

The prewriting phase is the time to plan for vivid details. My book, Paper Lighting: Prewriting Activities that Spark Creativity and Help Students Write Effectively, includes five worksheets that will help: Sensory Word Bank (p. 27-28), Packed with Facts #1 (p. 30), Packed with Facts #2 (p. 31), Packed with Facts Wordbank (p. 33-34) and Making Reasons Believable (pp. 60-62).
From Writing with Kids Newsletter, Winter, 2010. Sign up for quarterly newsletter below.

During the prewriting stage of a research essay or paper, students are asked to gather facts and information. Here are online resources.

Research Tips: How to Research

• Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Research

Easy Bibliography and Works Cited Resources for Essay Formats

For these two research essay resources, just fill in the blanks and it will return a correctly formatted citation. Cut and paste into your word processor; don’t forget to alphabetize by the author’s last name (MLA) or put in chronological order (APA).

• Easy Bib
• Citation Machine (click on the left menu)

Word Processor Formatting for MLA or APA

• MLA Essay Formatting Tutorial for MSWord
• APA Essay Formatting Tutorial for MSWord
• 
  Free MLA Essay Template from MSOffice Online

Online Research Sites for Your Essay or Paper

• Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources. The exhaustive list!
• Google Scholar. Searches scholarly and academic journals.
• Bartleby.com.
  Searches for quotes in poetry or in Bartlett’s Quotations, Columbia’s Quotations and other sources.
• Google Images.
  Research For Photos
• Wikipedia is an online resource often used by students doing research for an essay or paper. If you use it, look at the View History Tab at the top of the page to see how old the page is. If it’s recent, be careful: it may not have had enough editing to be accurate. If it’s several years old, it’s more likely to be accurate. For example, I wrote the original listing for Prewriting but it’s been edited many times.

  Even for established pages, follow up by looking at the suggested references: don’t use Wikipedia as the only resource, but as a starting point for research. Pay careful attention to the bottom of the article where references and external links are given. Often, these are good resources for your research essay or paper and will be allowed by your teacher.

• American Memory, Library of Congress. This government website is a good place to research American History and has first person accounts of many events.

TIP: How to Handle Facts and Information. Once you’ve found facts and information, Paper Lightning: Prewriting Activities that Spark Creativity has easy-to-use activities on sorting facts into categories or topics for use in your essay.

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Writing with Kids Newsletter by Darcy Pattison

The Writing with Kids Newsletter will be published four times during the school year and will focus on practical tips for teaching kids how to write better essays.

Read the full articles here:

Writing Persuasive and Research Essays, Winter, 2010

• FREE DOWNLOAD: Winter Writing (pdf file)
  Or, Learn more.
• Research: 3 Times to Outline
• Effective Persuasive Essays: Details
• Research: Finding Facts Online

Writing Narratives, Fall, 2010

• How Core Standards State Standards Will Change Student Narrative Writing
• Paper Lightning Correlations
• Narrative Fun
• Prewriting for Narratives
• Drawing as Prewriting

Rich Prewriting Environment Improves Narrative Essays

The best writing is revised writing. We all know that.
However, in schools, it’s often hard to get students to revise. In that case, provide a rich prewriting experience with multiple prewriting activities. The resulting drafts will be much better.

Here are the top three prewriting activities for writing narratives, either real or imagined. Use all three at the same time! That’s the key, to provide a rich prewriting environment.

Oral Storytelling

Allowing students to tell a story to a peer about a personal experience is a powerful prewriting tool.

• Use a timer. Set a timer for 1-2 minutes (depending on grade level) and let students tell a story for a set amount of time. This structure maintains classroom discipline, but allows students to rehearse a story orally.
• Restrict topics. You can focus narrative essays right from the start by your instructions on what kind of story to tell. Stories should be about something that took place in a short amount of time, maybe 30 minutes. Instead of telling about the 3-day trip to 6 Flags, tell about the 30-minutes you stood in line waiting for the roller coaster, then the ride itself and finally how you felt after riding.
• Tell it again. Ask students to tell the story again – a different way. Revising orally is so much easier and more fun than revising on paper. Ask for at least three different variations. Start at a different place, end at a different place, include new details, consider how you’d tell it differently to different audiences.

Word Bank

A word bank is a list of possible words or phrases to use in writing; they don’t have to use all of these words and they can use any new words they think of as they write. It’s just a prewriting activity that encourage students to consider word choices before they write. Create a word bank of strong verbs which might be used in the essay somewhere. Use other types of word banks as required by your class and curriculum.

Sensory Details

One kind of word bank that is especially useful in writing narratives is a sensory details word bank. As a prewriting task, ask students to write at least three specific details for each sense (see, hear, smell, taste, touch). Urge them to be as specific as possible: not fish, but catfish; not catfish, but catfish with a bent tail. For older students, repeat this at three points in the story. Remember that this is a type of word bank and you’re not looking for complete sentences here. It’s just a prewriting activity that encourage students to consider word choices before they write.

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Narrative Fun

10 Famous Narratives

• circa 70AD The Gospel of Luke
• late 14th Century The Cantebury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer
• 1834 A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, by David Crockett
• 1839 The Voyage of the Beagle (1839) by Charles Darwin
• 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass
• 1855 Hiawatha (narrative poem), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• 1872 Roughing It (1872), Mark Twain. A narrative of journey across the plains to Carson City, and his life and adventures in Nevada, California, and the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii).
• 1903 The Log of a Cowboy: a Narrative of Old Trail Days among the Indians of Wyoming, Montana, etc. 1903. by Andy Adams
• 1909-14 Drake’s Great Armada, Narrative mainly Captain Walter Bigges:
  A Summary and True Discourse of SIR FRANCIS DRAKE’S West Indian Voyage, begun in the year 1585. Wherein were taken the cities of SANTIAGO, SANTO DOMINGO, CARTHAGENA, and the town of ST. AUGUSTINE, in FLORIDA. Published by MASTER THOMAS CATES.
• 1962 Silent Spring, Rachel Carson.

Quotes about Narratives

The most important distinction between dialogue on the one hand and purely descriptive and narrative pieces on the other hand is a purely grammatical one.—H. Sweet.

Interesting Reading

• Science as Narrative: The Story of the Discovery of Penicillin
• Something from Nothing: Marie Curie and Radium, by Carla McClafferty
  Arkansas author, Carla McClafferty won the International Reading Association Award for Intermediate Readers for this biography-plus of Marie Curie. It’s a powerful narrative about the famous scientists and her discovery of radium.

Interesting Viewing

Narratives of Science, MIT Video. With Robert Kanigel, Thomas Levenson, and Alan Lightman
May 7, 2005. 1:27:05 length. Topic is about science writing.

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