Teaching Dialogue

When teaching dialogue, I like to use Noticings. I give students excerpts with dialogue and ask them what they notice about the quotation marks, punctuation, and capitalization. They they help to create the rules for writing dialogue.

The Plato Author's Techniques lesson continues with a brief discussion of dialogue. For my adaptation, students used noticings to develop the rules for writing dialogue. We then used printable comics at Make Beliefs Comix to practice writing dialogue that fits a certain mood in the text. While comics aren't typically punctuated like dialogue, we practiced using the dialogue rules in our comics.

Students were encouraged to create their own comics on the Make Beliefs Comix website using the same rules and their own moods after completion of the class lesson.

Students created dialogue with printable comic strips.

Dear John Punctuation Letter

Everyone has to try this. Open this Dear John letter and add the missing punctuation. You should probably print at least 2 copies, because what quickly becomes obvious is that this letter can be punctuated two very different ways. Each way has a very different tone as well. I used this letter to teach the importance of appropriate punctuation to students.

Noticings

When you teach students about "Noticings" you are asking them to teach themselves. Students look at examples of different works and tell you what they notice. For example, when I teach dialogue, I often ask students to look at a page that includes lots dialogue and tell me what they notice about the punctuation and use of capital letters. Students will basically write the rules for you, but they find them themselves as opposed to you just telling them.

I've used "Noticings" in writing units as well. Looking at our persuasive writing stack, I ask students what they notice that all of the persuasive essays have. Then I ask them what some have. You come up with a list "All" and "Some." When students write their own essays, all of them will include things like titles, paragraphs, and examples. Some of them will include subheadings and pictures and quotes. It is student-led learning.

Noticings ask students to find the information themselves. I like teaching with Noticings because students are often surprised at how much they already know. When students feel like experts, they develop a stronger connection to the material and their learning.