Fourth grade

Narrative writing unit

Day 9: Author’s Chair
Lesson Overview: In this lesson, students are given time to complete their polished final
draft versions of their personal narratives and students may opt to take the “author’s

chair” throughout class to read their story aloud to classmates.

Time: 60 minutes

Resources or Materials Needed

• Student Writing Notebooks

• Pencils

• ELMO

• SMART Board

Performance Objective: Given a final draft sheet and pencil, students will draft and publish
their final narrative works, to be summatively evaluated using the Nevada Department of

Education Formative Writing Tools Evaluation Guides for Fourth Grade Narrative Writing
Rubric, in which 80% of students score a minimum of 3 out of 4 (meeting or exceeding
expectations).

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Step 1: Pre-Instructional Activities

• Students will engage in a “Quiet 10”, during which time, students are to silently write for

ten minutes without stopping.

• Students are given the prompt, “Remembering Dreams” and are encouraged to write

about a dream they have had. Students can opt to write about a real dream that they
had, or an imaginary dream.

Step 2: Content Presentation

• Students will join teacher at carpet area

• Teacher tells students that today is the day!!!

• Teacher will instruct students to return to their seats for writer’s workshop time.
Students can take the next 25 minutes to complete their personal narratives. At this stage,

everyone should be working on rewriting their edited drafts on a clean final draft page.

• Teacher will remind students to keep their self-reflection rubric (distributed in lesson 2)

handy as they complete their final drafts, to make sure they are meeting each

expectation.

• Teacher will write Author’s Chair on the board and let students know that once they

complete their work, if they would like to share with the class, they can come up to the

board and write their name on the Author’s Chair sign-up list. During the second half of
our workshop time, students who have volunteered will get to come up and share.

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Step 3: Learner Participation

• Students return to their seats to complete their final drafts.

• After half an hour, students who have signed up for Author’s Chair will get to come up

and read their finished product to the class. Any students that have finished their

assignment can come up to the carpet area to listen to the readers. Students that need

more time to finish their work may stay at their seats and work during Author’s Chair.

• All student work will be submitted by the end of class.

Step 4: Assessment

• Teacher will use the Personal Narrative Rubric to grade each final draft.

Step 5: Follow-Through Activities

• Teacher may opt to conference/meet with students in small group that scored a 1 or 2 in

any area on the rubric.

Printable RESOURCES
• Criterion-Based Rubric (Page 4)

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