Writing Activities
Oral History: A Writing Workshop
Who would you like to learn more about? This step-by-step workshop guides students writing an oral history on a person of interest.
- Grades: 3–5
Scholastic’s “Writing Workshop: Oral History" helps students (grades 3–5) become comfortable with the writing process as they work to complete their report. The workshop takes students through each step of the writing process and includes tutorials, reproducibles, online planning tools, and interactive mini-lessons.
The steps include:
- Mini-Lesson (1 day): Students work on their note-taking and punctuation skills, necessary for conducting and reporting accurate interview information.
- Prewriting (3–4 days): Students choose an individual to interview, gather information about the person, develop questions for the interview, and finally, conduct the interview.
- Drafting (2–3 days): Students review the notes or tape from their interview and begin a rough draft — organizing their work and getting their thoughts down on paper.
- Revising (2–3 days): Students focus on the content of their report. (Remind them that revising doesn't involve making changes for spelling, grammar, or punctuation.)
- Editing (1–2 days): Now, students focus on spelling, grammar, punctuation (including use of quotation marks), capitalization, and subject/ verb agreement.
- Reviewing (1–2 days): Students get a final look before taking their work public. They discuss how to conduct a review process, including: peer review, self assessment, and teacher conferencing.
- Publishing (1–2 days): Students celebrate their accomplishments and post their work on Scholastic.com. Other ideas for publishing their oral history reports are shared.
- Subjects:Listening Comprehension, Research Skills, Expository Writing, Nonfiction Writing, Writing Process, Communication and Language Development, Communication and the Internet
- Skills:Primary Sources, Listening Comprehension, Research Skills, Expository Writing
