Transcript Freezing Time - UNT's College of Education

Freezing Time
Theresa Brown
North Star of Texas Writing Project
Demonstration Lesson
June 16, 2005
[email protected]
Students sometimes list events in their
writing, instead of asking themselves two
important questions:
1)What do you want the reader to know?
2)How do you want the reader to feel?
Why Freeze Time???
-It allows the writer to focus on a particular
moment they are wanting his/her reader to
experience.
-It helps the reader to visualize and really
connect with what is happening.
-TEKS(4th): 15E, 18BCDEF, 19CDGH, 20C
-In one piece of writing, there may be more than
one moment in which the author freezes time.
Without guidance, students will often
choose topics that are huge and unfocused.
Such topics usually lead to a list of ideas
where the writing never goes beneath the
surface.
Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi (P.58)
-Good writing has a clear sense of focus.
Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi (P.59)
-An ineffective writer sees broad
impressions that evoke vague labels; a
powerful writer visualizes specific details
that create a literary virtual reality.
Harry Noden (P.2)
Ways to Freeze Time:
Seeing
Hearing
Saying
Feeling
Smelling
Tasting
Student Sample
Student Sample
-This is how I write. I take a moment-an image, a
memory, a phrase, an idea-and I hold it in my hands and
declare it a treasure.
Lucy Calkins
-Narrowing the time focus allows the writer to go
deeper into the subject.
Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi (P.60)
-We need to let students feel the way writing takes on
new power when they move from the general to the
specific.
Ralph Fletcher and Joann Portalupi (P.78)
Now What?
-Continue practicing freezing time, both in the
first draft, but also in the revising stage.
-Play with time. Use the Writing VCR, as
Barry Lane calls it. (Play…writing the story as
it happened. Fast forward…to zip ahead to
the next day or week or year. Rewind…to
write a flashback. Pause…to zoom in with
physical detail, or to climb inside the mind of
your character. Reviser’s Toolbox P.105)
-Tie into Harry Noden’s brush strokes.
Final Thought…
“When you write, your whole life is a stretch of mountains
and you choose where you want to hang out. You can write
one sentence and describe twenty years of your life or
write three pages about one tiny moment that only lasted
a minute. This is the kind of moment you’d make in slow
motion if you were making a movie. This is the big
moment, the moment too important to just let slip by with
a sentence or two. You need to make the reader feel what
your character feels. You need to pull the reader into a
place, a time, an event. You need to make the reader swim
in your ocean of words.”
Barry Lane
Bibliography
-Fletcher, R. & Portalupi, J. (1998). Craft Lessons:
Teaching Writing K-8. York, ME: Steinhouse
Publishers.
-Noden, H. (1999). Image Grammar: Using
Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing.
Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
-Lane, B. (1999). Reviser’s Toolbox.
Shoreham, VT: Discover Writing Press.
-Calkins, L. (1994). The Art of Teaching Writing.
Portsmouth, NH: Irwin Publishing.