When people ask me why I chose to move to third grade, I talk about the depth I started craving. I first noticed it in Carole’s classroom; she and I, along with five others, were part of a literacy coaching institute led by Christy. To learn about coaching moves, we focused on each others’ teaching. My brain, though, gravitated towards students’ conversations about books. Up to that point, I had only participated in K-2 labsites, so this felt like a flashy new toy that kidnapped my attention.
I will always love the way kindergarteners learn to read and write; that growing volume that reflects on the piles of books they read daily as well as the overflowing booklets that barely fit in their writing folders. Third grade, however, gifted me with a new way of seeing developmental stages by zooming in and teaching focus. Focus, that thing I often struggle with as a writer.
Focused stories are not easy to write. They don’t just happen; they result from a revision process, vulnerability, and courage. That motivated me to move to upper elementary, more specifically, third grade, which was that place for me to experience the milestone students go through.
Up to second grade, students are encouraged to write more and more stories, so they become fluent in the stages of the writing process. Beginning in third grade, we ask them to stay with a story a bit longer to learn ways to develop ideas from a particular perspective. Christy and others at Teachers College call this “the heart of the story.”
That transition from second to third grade can feel tricky for some writers; up to this point, they had a folder and a booklet, and they quickly moved from choosing an idea to planning and drafting. Their writing was concrete and immediate; now, we’re asking them to dig in more abstractly. We slow them down and teach them strategies to write “seed ideas” that begin to accumulate in that notebook, one entry after the other. These entries will be possibilities for stories, some will come to publication, and others will enjoy the safety of staying private in that notebook. Writers will learn to choose those eager to become something.
“Think of a person who matters to you; list small moments with that person, and write an entry about one of those.”
In the notebook, that would look something like this:
| Gaby (sister) | – Playing Barbie when we were little. – At the airport, when I met my niece for the first time. – Driving to Dad’s house on the day of his birthday. – The bouquet she gave me on her wedding day. | I had just arrived from Cairo, tired, hungry, eager. My mom and brother were waiting for me, and they had told me Gaby would be waiting for us how. Thet home with the baby. To my surprise, as I talked to mom, Andres, and Tia Duilia about the flight, Gaby came out of the crowd holding Clarissa in her arms. I reached out and embraced them both. We held on to each other for a while. |
Right away, you can see where we start developing a seed idea. We teach writers to go from concrete to abstract, going deeper by asking themselves what a story is really about; “Could it be about family bonds? Could it be about the weight of distance? Could it be about motherhood?” What is this story teaching me about myself, others, the world? Why does this story matter to me? Why do I feel like sharing it?
All those questions help us teach students to discover the meaning and themes in their stories. In third grade, they also learn about interpretation and character development because the books they’ll start to read have more complex characters than those in second grade. Such complexity is the goal for upper grades. We want writers to discover a voice they’ve never heard before and understand more about themselves by writing stories this way.
Developing stories is hard work. Teachers who experience it in writing institutes always agree that it isn’t easy to go deep and when they achieve that “heart,” they see writing through new lenses. Writing is discovery, but we can only get there once we learn to unfold the many layers our stories have.
Start with a Story 