Bless, Address, & Press No. 1

After looking through my peers’ recent blog posts, I would like to expand on Kristina’s Week 7 blog on narrative writing. Hicks says that a good critique should bless (offer praise), address (ask specific questions about the ideas), and press (ask critical questions to help the writer move forward) (p. 83). I hope to achieve all three for Kristina through my feedback today, as well as add to my own understanding of the elements of story.

1. Bless: I really enjoyed Tompkins’ chapter on narrative writing as well as Kristina’s presentation on teaching the genre, so I was excited to see Kristina wrote about preparing for her presentation in her most recent blog. Since I’ll be doing a presentation on letter writing in several weeks, I was eager to learn how Kristina prepared for her presentation. She did a wonderful job explaining her process, from her own experiences with the genre to her research process (great idea to search The Reading Teacher journals for relevant articles!). She also remembered Hicks’ elements of a good presentation, focusing on the stickiness factor (p. 73). As someone who also may be inclined to read off the slides, I need to keep these elements in mind when designing my own genre presentation.
2. Address: Kristina wrote about her hesitations for teaching the narrative genre, having very few memories of learning to teach narrative writing during her undergraduate. I hope these memories are an exception to what most elementary teachers are teaching now, as I remember learning about story structure several times over when I was in elementary and middle school.
   
   In chapter 8, Tompkins talks about the elements of narrative writing, beginning with plot. I remember learning about the story structure pyramid when I was in school.

   

   Freytag's (story structure) pyramid.
   Retrieved from rookreading.com

   My classmates and I would read a story and then map it out using the pyramid, from exposition (beginning) to climax (middle) and end (resolution/denouement). Later, we learned to write our own stories using the story structure pyramid as a guide to map out the plot. In high school, I remember using the pyramid to map out Shakespeare’s plays to add to my own understanding of the text.
   
   Tompkins’ cites Applebee’s (1980) research that “by the time children begin kindergarten, they’ve already developed a concept of what story is, and these expectations guide them as they respond to stories and tell their own.” (Applebee, cited in Tompkins, pg. 171). Tompkins goes on to say that children as young as two and a half have a concept of story (p. 171), something I notice with my own 2.5 year-old who will eagerly say “The End!” when we finish a story. As a future library media specialist, I’m certain that helping my young readers understand the elements of story would be important. I found these great videos on weareteachers.com that would be great to show my students while we discuss the elements of story!
3. Press : Kristina says that “when students are explicitly taught about the structural elements of narrative writing, they will develop into better writers.” I would like to know her ideas for teaching young students these elements. We got a glimpse into Kristina’s life as a teacher through her genre presentation, and I really enjoyed the character maps to show the outside and inside (F.A.S.T. acronym) of characters. What are some other teaching strategies that she might use for teaching the elements of story/narrative writing with elementary students? I believe that including more examples of ways to teach story in her blog (such as talking about the character maps) would be beneficial to readers like me who are interested in learning more about how to teach story. 

Sources outside class textbooks
Applebee, A.N. (1980). The child’s concept of story: Ages 2 to 17. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wells, K. (2019, March 17). “Genre expert” workshop presentation. Retrieved from https://kristinawells-lted618-spring2019.blogspot.com/2019/03/genre-expert-workshop-presentation.html