Common Core Writing Lesson Ideas: Using Dialogue

I have been trying to sit down and write a blog post for 2 days.  Tuesday was my husband's birthday and yesterday we had dinner with out-of-town family.  On top of that I am trying to balance work this summer (I'm working all summer reviewing curriculum and doing summer school), working out every day, and my first class for my Doctoral program. This first summer session I am taking the introductory statistics class.  Luckily so far, I have found it really easy.  I am trying to sit down and make a list of what products for my store I want to finish this summer and a list of some blog post series. Many of my posts will probably focus on incorporating the Common Core skills into the Content Areas.  I also want to start gathering lesson ideas for the Common Core Writing and Language Standards.

One of the skills my students have always struggled with when doing Narrative writing whether they were Middle School or Elementary students is how to use dialogue.  When using dialogue, students have to consider rules of punctuation, characterization, and paragraphing.  Using dialogue correctly is a higher level writing skill. (Using dialogue falls under CCSS Writing Standard 3 (Narrative Writing) part B at most of the grade levels.

This year I would like to spend a little more time on how to use dialogue.  Thus, I decided to search Pinterest and the internet for ideas on teaching dialogue.

Writing Fix has a couple lessons on dialogue. Here are some links:

http://writingfix.com/right_brain/Serendipitous_Dialogue_Scene1.htm

http://www.writingfix.com/Picture_Book_Prompts/GoodDogCarl3.htm

http://writingfix.com/Chapter_Book_Prompts/TomSwift3.htm

http://www.writingfix.com/Picture_Book_Prompts/webfiles3.htm

The last lesson is the one I wanted to use with my student's this year as a review of dialogue and I ran out of time. It uses the book The Web Files. 

We did a unit on mysteries, so I thought this would be a cute lesson to incorporate with mysteries.  They write a dialogue to describe the facts of a crime (sort of like the old show Dragnet.)

...So, now I return to this post several hours later after bootcamp, walking the dog, dinner, and a shower. When I find a ton of great resources, they tend to turn into really long posts and take forever to write.  Sometimes there are so many great things to share.  So I think I am going to have to sometimes split a topic over a couple days so I can share lots of things with you without the post getting way too long.

If you have followed me for awhile, you know I love all things Read Write Think.  Here are a couple links to some lessons on dialogue from Read Write Think that look great:

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/choosing-clear-varied-dialogue-291.html

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/lesson-plans/character-clash-minilesson-paragraphing-117.html

Last for today, but certainly not least is a freebie on dialogue from Miss Nannini.  I can promise you this little unit is getting printed out and put in my Common Core Language Arts binder under dialogue. If you click on the picture below, you can go see her blog post about this freebie.

 

What are some of your favorite lessons and ideas to teach dialogue?  I always like to have students look at their own books they are reading to help them see how dialogue is organized and punctuated.  I have always found it resonates with them when they see examples in their own books.