[MOSAIC] Lead and Stretch

[Kukonis at aol.com]

Joy,
I really I thought I answered this online but maybe I sent off an email  
privately.... anyway... 
the stretch part of Carl Anderson's work (which I adapted) was taken from a  
workshop he did with my first graders as part of our satellite program with 
TC. 
 
Carl merely said the following in one of the quickest yet most effective  
minilessons I've ever watched....."there are three ways a writer can tell more  
about something." They can either: 1. tell what they were thinking about or  2. 
tell what they said at the time or 3.  they can tell the very next  action 
they did. 
 
for example: if the detail was ....My dog ran away. 
 
Three  ways you could expand on that sentence  are: I thought I  never would 
see Mudge again. or you could write... "Mudge,"  I  screamed hysterically, 
"where are you? " or you could write "Panicking, I looked  under the bed, in the 
closet, and around the basement... but Mudge was no where  to be found. 
 
The way I got my first graders to use this information was to scroll  their 
story out as a plan:
 first page- lead and then a stretch for that lead (using one of the  above 
methods)
second page-the beginning event of the story and then a stretch for that  
event.
third page- middle event and then a stretch for that event
fourth page-"outside ending" event and then a stretch for that event
fifth page- an "inside ending" and then a "show not tell" for that inside  
ending
 
This kind of structured writing is taken from Lucy Calkins'   units on small 
moments (writing  across your hands), Carl's ideas from our  workshop, and 
David Middlebrooks' plan of textmapping.... in other words: story  structure 
happens at a particular place in each genre....we examined many small  moments and 
we noticed that the page setup was much like what was described  above. 
 
Hope this helps
Pam
 
PS to the reader who posted the badabing sentence... I tried this out with  
first graders for a memory page we were making and it worked like a charm to  
pull the most important information into one sentence creatively.
For those who don't know the badabing it goes like this: ba (tell what your  
feet did) da (tell what your eyes saw) bing tell what you thought.....
a first grader's memory page about our multicultural dance went like this:  
As sweat swirled down my face as I pounded my feet on the stage, my mom's eyes  
locked on to mine. I wondered if the crowd would roar an applause. (fluent  
writer)
another version (early writer) ... My kimono waved on my legs as I watched  
my fan twirl. I worried that my tummy felt too tight. 



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