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Candidate: Natalie Peyton Date: 1/23/18 Subject(s): Language Arts

Nashua-Plainfield 50 students (split in
School: Intermediate Grade Level: 4th Grade Student #: 2 classes of 25)
Cooperating Teacher: Kayla Wolf
Lesson Title: Teaching Dialogue in Personal Narratives
Standard(s): RL.4.5 - Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the
structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters,
settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.

W.4.3 - Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences
The 4th grade students will be able to write their own dialogue sentences to
Objective (cognitive): include in their personal narrative with correct punctuation and capitalization
with 4 out of 5 dialogue sentences correct (80% accuracy).
The 4th grade students will be able to appreciate why dialogue is important when
(affective): writing and reading a personal narrative by explaining why it will help their own
story flow with 80% accuracy.
The 4th grade students will be able to describe and understand how dialogue is
(psychomotor): used in a story by creating corrections to an example paragraph and writing it on
the board with 90% accuracy.
Prerequisites:
 What is included in a personal narrative
 That dialogue is what a character says in a story
 Using punctuation and capitalization in a sentence
 How to write a complete sentence
Materials:
 The book
 Pre-Test
 Post-Test
 Paper
 Pencil
 White board and markers
 Computer to continue working on personal narrative
 The book My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother.
Purpose:
 The purpose of this lesson is to assess student’s knowledge on writing dialogue in a
personal narrative. When writing a personal narrative, it is required that dialogue is
included so the reader can understand how the characters interact in the story. Students
must be able to apply prior knowledge of punctuation and capitalization when writing
dialogue. Students practice writing it and how to integrate it into a story.
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_____________________________________________________________________
Anticipatory Set: (10 minutes)
 The students will begin the class by taking a dialogue pretest.
 “Good morning students. Once everyone has taken their seats, all you will need on your
desk is a pencil. I am going to hand out a pretest. This is not graded but will let me know
how much you know about dialogue. I want you to try your best and fill out everything
you know about dialogue. Make sure to put your name on the test”
 “Once you finish the test, please bring it up to the front and hand it to me. While you
wait for others to finish, please read to self.”
 Make sure students remain quiet and walk around to make sure students are following
test guidelines. Collect tests and put them in a pile to label pre-tests. (Test and key are
attached to lesson).
Modeling (I can): (10 minutes)
 Once everyone has finished their pre-test, review what the students know about dialogue.
 Make sure the students goes over these main points of why we include dialogue.
o So the reader knows who is talking in a story
o How characters interact and their personality
o Need punctuation and capitalization
o Commas allow the reader to breath
 Review different anchor charts that are hanging in the room
o Personal Narrative Anchor Chart: “Does a personal narrative need dialogue?” The
students should answer yes to clarify that when talking about a small moment you
must describe what the characters said to each other and why this moment
impacted your life.
o Put Said to Bed Anchor Chart: “How do we let the reader know who is talking?
We must make sure that before or after a dialogue sentence in a story, the author
writes who is talking. We do not want the reader to get bored and say ‘said’ after
every dialogue. So for personal narrative we are putting ‘said to bed’ and you
should try to use other adjectives.”
 Point out the list of adjectives they can use instead of said to go with their
dialogue. Examples are: yelled, exclaimed, whispered, whimpered, stated,
etc.
o Complete Sentence Anchor Chart: “What is needed in a complete sentence?”
Students need to respond with subject (noun, what the sentence is about), verb
(action, helping, linking words), the sentence must make sense, capital letters, and
correct punctuation.
o Verbs Show Actions Anchor Chart: Ask the students what tense the story must be
told in. Remind them that this memory already happened, it is not in the future,
and it is not happening right now. So the personal narrative must be written in
past tense. Review the past tense of certain words like they end with -ed, were,
went, ate, saw, and was.
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o Dialogue Anchor Chart: Lastly, review the dialogue anchor chart they created as
a class at the beginning of the year. Call on students to read the 3 examples that
are there. “We need to make sure to use punctuation and capitalization when
writing dialogue. However, you do not want to do too much punctuation, if you
put a question or exclamation point, you do not need a comma as well.”
Check for understanding- To check for understanding, call on different students to read the
anchor charts around the room. Also, after each anchor chart have the class give you a thumbs
up or thumbs down on whether or not they understand that anchor chart.
Reteach (if needed)- If students do not understand an anchor chart, go over the chart more in
detail and do an example on the board. If students are still confused, have students that do
understand pair up with students that don’t and have them explain it and work it out as a group.
Guided Instruction (We can): (15 minutes)
 To show students a real-life example of dialogue in a personal narrative, read from pages
4-5 in My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother. The students have been read this story aloud
a few days earlier, so they are familiar with the book.
o First show the page to the students and ask them to look at how the dialogue is
formatted on the page. “See how the author starts on a new line each time
someone else talks?” Make sure they understand that dialogue for each person
goes on a new line.
o Next have the students look at how each line is capitalized, has punctuation, and
quotation marks just around what the person is saying. Ask students some of these
questions:
 “Where should the quotations go?” Just over what the person is saying.
 “Where does the punctuation go?” Before the last set of quotation marks.
If it is not a question or exclamation mark, put a comma.
 “When do we capitalize words?” At the beginning of the dialogue and
sentence, but if we say we said after the dialogue, you do not capitalize
that first word.
o “Is it okay for some sentences to be short?” The answer is yes. Show the
students the example in the book where they say, “Yuck!” This is short, but is a
sentence showing emotion, so it is okay. There is also dialogue before and after
toe explain why this person said that.
o Short and long sentences
 I will then write an example paragraph on the board that the students will come up to the
board and correct using a different colored marker. Start with one student in the room
and then go around until every student has made one correction. The example is written
below. The quotation marks, capital letters, and punctuation will be missing from the
board and they will need to add it. The numbers next to the line says how many things
need to be fixed.
“I am so excited to go shopping!” exclaimed Jess. (6)
“Where are you going shopping?” asked Nicole. (6)
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Jess answered, “I am going up to the Mall of America.” (6)

“Sounds like fun,” stated Nicole, “I have never been there.” (8)
“I will have to show you what I get when I get back,” Jess said smiling. (6)
 Here are some example questions the students might ask and how you can answer them.
o “Why do you not capitalize after putting a question or exclamation mark in the
quotation marks?”
 Because you are just showing expression about what a question or
exclamation mark, but that is not the end of the sentence. You still need to
know who said it, so the sentence has not ended.
o “When do I put a period verse a comma at the end of the quotation marks?”
 You put a comma to take a breath, but still need to state who is talking.
You put a period when you already know who is talking by stating it
before the dialogue and you are ending the sentence as a whole, so that is
when you would use a period.
o “Why do I put a comma before quotation marks if I state who is saying it?”
 You put a comma before, so the reader knows to take a breath before
saying what the character says.
o “When can I state who says it in the middle of the dialogue?”
 You can state who says it in the middle if there is a natural break in the
phrase. Then we need to have commas with the breath and the quotations
just around what the person says. Then you do not capitalize when you go
back into dialogue because you haven’t finished the sentence.
Check for understanding- I will check for understanding when the students come up to the board.
I will also ask students questions about why we made that change and if we are missing anything
as we go along in the lesson.
Reteach (if needed)- If the students are still confused. I will show them another example and
then say it out loud for them to hear the expression and when I take breathes. I will also have
them write it on their own paper to get practice.
Independent Practice (You can): (10 minutes)
 After you have finished the example on the board. Have students pull out a blank sheet
of paper and a pencil. “Now on your paper, write your own dialogue sentence. Make
sure to have correct punctuation, capitalization, and that it is a complete sentence.” Give
students a few minutes to write down their example.
 After students have written down their sentence, have them share with the people sitting
around them. Walk around and check their sentences as they are sharing.
 “Now we are going to continue working on writing our personal narratives. If you have
already written some dialogue, check to make sure you have done it correctly. If you
have not written dialogue yet. Write a dialogue sentence you want to include in your
story.” Then give the students time to work.
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 After students have written a dialogue sentence for their story, have them share with the
people around them again. Their partners should make sure they included everything
they needed in the dialogue and that it was done correctly.
 Once they have stopped sharing with their partner, they can have work time adding more
dialogue to their personal narrative.
____________________________________________________________________________
Closure: (10 minutes)
 To end class, students will take a posttest of what they learned about dialogue. “Students,
please put everything away and only have a pencil on your desk. I am going to be
passing out the posttest. It is the same as the pretest, but this time it will be graded.
Remember what you went over today and apply that to the sentences on the test.”
 After they finish the test, they will hand it to you to correct and have the rest of class to
continue typing their personal narrative.
 Future learning for the students will be how dialogue intertwines in their personal
narrative. They will have another week to keep writing their story and I will be doing
conferences with them over their story and helping them add dialogue.
Assessment:
Formative:
 Formative assessment in this lesson is what students remember from the anchor chart.
 Students will also be assessed on how they fix the example dialogue on the board.
 They will also be assessed on the example sentences they make at their seats and share
with their partners.
 Lastly, they will be assessed on how they collaborate with their peers when sharing their
dialogue.
Summative:
 Summative assessment in this lesson is the posttest they take. I will also be comparing
the change from the pretest to the posttest.
 Students will also be graded in the future in how they use dialogue in their personal
narrative.
Enrichment/Extension/Modification:
 For students that are struggling, they will work with Ms. Shields or work with a partner to
create the dialogue. They will only be asked to add 1 dialogue to their story. They will
be given a dialogue sentence and they will just make corrections, instead of having to
come up with one all on their own.
 For students who finish early, they will have time to continue writing their story and will
be challenged to write multiple dialogue paragraphs in their personal narrative. They will
also be challenged to never say ‘said’ and add emotion to their dialogue.
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Name: ____________________________ Date: _________________

Fix the following sentences and rewrite. Make sure to add quotation marks (“ “),
commas (,), other punctuation (.!?), and correct capitalization.

1. i am excited for spring break and our spring party at school stated Elexa.

2. can you believe the school day is almost over asked Jalissa.

3. Madison screamed i love being here at school and having new friends

4. i am enjoying these mysteries said Matthew I think they are fun to read

5. Trent wondered what is going to happen with this crazy weather

6. fourth grade is the best and i love coming to school every day yelled Ava.
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Name: ____________________________ Date: _________________

Fix the following sentences and rewrite. Make sure to add quotation marks (“ “),
commas (,), other punctuation (.!?), and correct capitalization. (30 points possible)

1. i am excited for spring break and our spring party at school stated Elexa.

“I am excited for spring break and our spring party at school,” stated Elexa.

(4 points)

2. can you believe the school day is almost over asked Jalissa

“Can you believe the school day is almost over?” asked Jalissa.

(4 points)

3. Madison screamed i love being here at school and having new friends

Madison screamed, “I love being here at school and having new friends!”

(4 points)

4. i am enjoying these mysteries said Matthew I think they are fun to read

“I am enjoying these mysteries,” said Matthew, “I think they are fun to read.”

(9 points)

5. Trent wondered what is going to happen with this crazy weather

Trent wondered, “What is going to happen with this crazy weather?”

(5 points)

6. fourth grade is the best and i love coming to school every day yelled Ava

“Fourth grade is the best and I love coming to school everyday!” yelled Ava.

(4 points)
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Analysis of Data:
I teach 2 sections of language arts at Nashua-Plainfield Intermediate School. The first class Mrs.
Wolf’s homeroom and the second is Mrs. Master’s homeroom. The students scores are split up
based upon their class. The students are labeled just by numbers for this study. The second
column is the pre-test score and the third column is what they scored on the post-test after being
taught the dialogue lesson. Then, next to those columns is the change that happened between
those 2 test. The next column shows what score the student would receive in the schools grading
school. A 3 means they understand the skill, a 2 is they are working towards it, and a 1 means
that it needs work. The 1st score is based on the pre-test and the 2nd score is based on the post-
test. I then made a column next to that explaining if they stayed neutral in receiving a 1,2, or 3,
or if they went up or down between the two tests.
Wolf Language
Student Pre-Test Post-Test Change 1st Score 2nd Score Change
1 20/30 25/30 +5 1 2 up
2 8/30 16/30 +8 1 1 -
3 25/30 29/30 +4 2 3 up
4 9/30 11/30 +2 1 1 -
5 23/30 28/30 +5 1 3 up
6 26/30 27/30 +1 2 3 up
7 25/30 28/30 +3 2 3 up
8 15/30 18/30 +3 1 1 -
9 28/30 30/30 +2 3 3 -
10 27/30 27/30 0 3 3 -
11 19/30 24/30 +5 1 2 up
12 26/30 27/30 +1 2 3 up
13 25/30 22/30 -3 2 1 down
14 21/30 26/30 +5 1 2 up
15 19/30 22/30 +3 1 1 -
16 28/30 27/30 -1 3 3 -
17 18/30 24/30 +6 1 2 up
18 26/30 29/30 +3 2 3 up
19 25/30 27/30 +2 2 3 up
20 26/30 29/30 +3 2 3 up
21 26/30 28/30 +2 2 3 up
22 23/30 24/30 +1 1 2 up
23 27/30 27/30 0 3 3 -
24 19/30 22/30 +3 1 1 -
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Masters Language
Student Pre-Test Post-Test Change 1st Score 2nd Score Change
25 26/30 27/30 +1 2 3 up
26 30/30 27/30 -3 3 3 -
27 21/30 23/30 +2 1 1 -
28 26/30 26/30 0 2 2 -
29 30/30 29/30 -1 3 3 -
30 25/30 28/30 +3 2 3 up
31 24/30 19/30 -5 2 1 down
32 28/30 30/30 +2 3 3 -
33 21/30 22/30 +1 1 1 -
34 16/30 24/30 +8 1 2 up
35 13/30 16/30 +3 1 1 -
36 11/30 28/30 +17 1 3 up
37 28/30 28/30 0 3 3 -
38 30/30 29/30 -1 3 3 -
39 24/30 21/30 -3 2 1 down
40 27/30 29/30 +2 3 3 -
41 27/30 28/30 +1 3 3 -
42 28/30 25/30 -3 3 2 down
43 30/30 29/30 -1 3 3 -
44 26/30 27/30 +1 2 3 up
45 26/30 22/30 -4 2 1 down
46 7/30 7/30 0 1 1 -

Mean Median Mode Range Standard

Deviation
Pretest 23 26 26 23 5.992588
Posttest 24.804347 27 27 23 4.937923
Change 1.804347 1 1 0 1.054665
1st Score 1.89139434 2 1 3 .82268559
2nd Score 2.26086957 3 3 3 .88027224
Change .36947523 1 2 0 .05758665
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Reflection:
Overall, I am very proud of this lesson. I feel like I knew the students well enough on
how they learn and discussed with Mrs. Wolf in detail what they have been taught in the past.
This allowed me to review certain skills with them and jump into teaching what they might still
be struggling with. Dialogue is a skill 4th graders need to master, and it is clear they still need
practice doing it. The students are also not used to taking pretests, so it threw them off when I
had them start with that at the beginning of class. I told them that it was not graded, which could
either not motivate them to try that hard, but I told them it was important so I knew what they
know about dialogue from the beginning. After they finished the test, they knew to go into read
to self while they waited. Once everyone finished the class, I brought them together to review
the anchor charts. I called on students to read the charts and asked them questions to see if they
understood it. I usually only called on people that raised their hands, which a lot of the time is
the same people. I want to work on how to get every student to talk, but not call them out and
feel uncomfortable. By having students give me a thumbs or thumbs down, it allowed me to
check students understanding without calling them out. I feel like the students liked when I
related dialogue to the book I read to them in class. I believed that learning occurred in this
lesson, because many students grades went up or stayed the same for the posttest. I also believe
that students learned more about dialogue because as we went through the example on the board,
more students were able to put the correction on the paragraph by themselves. More students
were also raising their hands to explain why we made that change. I taught this lesson before
they started writing their personal narratives, and after grading those, I saw that many of them
understood it or were close. The biggest thing I would improve for future teaching would be to
focus more on commas and were punctuation goes. For the students that were still struggling, I
would pull them aside and have them read their story aloud. I would explain to them that we put
quotations around what is being said and to add detail to the story. If I were to modify anything,
I would give students more time to work with partners on dialogue and give myself the
opportunity to walk around the room and check how each students is doing.
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Area for Improvement:

Wiehardt, G. (2017, November 26). Top tips for writing dialogue. In The Balance. Retrieved
from https://www.thebalance.com/top-tips-for-writing-dialogue-1277070.
Dialogue is important skill for 4th graders and any future writers. Dialogue is seen in
many types of writing, especially chapter books. We are trying to develop life long readers and
writers, and dialogue is a tool that overlaps between both skills. If I were to improve future
lessons on dialogue, I would want to spread out the lesson over a longer period of time and give
them more practice examples, worksheets, and examples in books. The resource I found gave
several tips on how to help students understand how to write dialogue. First, they need to listen
how people talk. I would plan an activity, where they are in partners and one person talks, while
the other has to record what they say. They must listen to breathes, pauses, excitement,
questions, and then be able to go back in and add everything you need for dialogue. This allows
them to connect that we are writing how people talk. Something else I would add for future
teaching is to show students that they should not ramble with dialogue or be too short. We will
go through and break up the speech, like how a person would pause and let someone else talk.
Wiehardt gives the advice to show students how there is action with dialogue. Unless a person is
giving a speech, they are usually doing something while they are talking. I would have students
do an activity in class where they talk with a partner, but they can do whatever they want as they
are talking. They can draw, walk around, etc. This will show them that they talk while
performing other tasks and that as a writer, we must show the visual to the reader. The last
improvement I would make for future lessons would to focus more on punctuation. I would
want to work on worksheets and have them correct their own worksheet, each other’s, and
myself as a teacher. This will let them see what they need to improve on. As far as my teaching
style, I would want to improve by having more discussion and not just want to student talking to
the whole class. I like the idea of doing partners and having them discuss what they are thinking.
Then we will talk as a class once everyone has a handle on dialogue. I think I did a fairly good
job of getting every student involved and getting them out of their seat when they worked with
partners and coming up to the board to write on it. Overall, I want to give my students more
practice and get feedback on what they still need to work on.
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Student Development:
Brindle, M., Graham, S., Harris, K. R., & Hebert, M. (2016). Third and fourth grade teacher’s
classroom practices in writing: A national survey. Reading and Writing, 29(5), 929-954.
When teaching students writing, there are a lot of different theories or philosophies that
teachers follow with their instruction. The article I chose to look at was a study at how teachers
and students are prepared writing courses in the 3rd and 4th grade. The author did not list specific
theories, but rather theoretical practices teachers should follow while teaching writing, that tie
into specific theories like constructivism, discovery learning, and problem-based learning. Some
teachers focus on making sure the writing is 100% correct, while other teachers want to focus
more on letting them just write and help them improve one thing at a time naturally. Both
theoretical approaches help with students intellectually. If you have students try to fix to many
things at once, then they won’t be able to retain that information and improve for next time.
However, if you let the students make improvements naturally, they might not ever know they
are making mistakes. I think it is important to have a mixture of both. In writing, you can have
them free write and be able to express themselves naturally through that. Then as a lesson, you
can focus each day on fixing one certain thing in their writing, rather than fix everything all at
once. Another theory the article talks about is teachers need to be confident in their writing
ability. If they question what they are teaching, students will start to question themselves as
writers. By showing students they need to be confident, this helps them emotional be ready for
class and confident in their abilities to write. Another important aspect of writing is allowing
them to collaborate with others, either with peers or the teacher. This allows the writer to have
others read through their material and talk about how they can improve this. This allows
students to socially interact with one another in a class that has a lot of independent work in it.
As far as physical development for students, an important theory for teachers to use in the
classroom to provide students time to practice this skill. They must be able to build up the
endurance of writing for a long period of time and slowly add on more time. This can be for
writing or for typing, but the overall goal should be to improve how long they write and the
quality of their writing.