Diary of an Egg Fictional Narrative Writing Unit (Aligned to Common Core)

Diary of an Egg Fictional Narrative Writing Unit

My students love this writing unit and I love to teach it! It's fun, engaging and aligned to Common Core Writing Standards.

The students write diary entries from an egg’s point of view. I try to do this unit the two weeks before spring break (around March or April), but it doesn’t have to correlate to Easter in any way. The focus of the lessons are on writing using descriptive language such as using internal thoughts, actions, dialogue, sensory detail, strong verbs, specific instead of vague language, and comparisons (similes, metaphors, personification).

Included in this unit are 9 complete lessons that take about 45-60 minutes each. The lessons follow the writing workshop model used in Lucy Calkins’ Writing Units of Study. Each lesson follows the following mini lesson writing workshop structure: connect, teach, active engagement, link, share. Each lesson includes the Common Core writing standards that the lesson is based on, a student friendly objective, a list of materials needed, all handouts needed, the scripted lesson, and many student writing examples. The titles of the lessons are as follows:

Lesson 1: GET TO KNOW YOUR CHARACTER,

Lesson 2: WRITING IN FIRST PERSON,

Lesson 3: SHOW DON'T TELL,

Lesson 4: USING STRONGER VERBS,

Lesson 5: CRACK OPEN VAGUE WORDS,

Lesson 6: USING COMPARISON,

Lesson 7: REVIEW OF WORD CHOICE TECHNIQUES,

Lesson 8: WRITING AN ENDING,

Lesson 9: FINISHING TOUCHES.

At the end of the unit a detailed rubric is included for you to score the students' writing based on the Common Core Standards covered in the unit.

Before starting the unit, purchase a plastic egg for each student in the class. You then want to creatively design faces for the eggs using Sharpie. My egg designs are included in the unit.

On the first day of the unit, you will hand the eggs out to the students. Each day you will set up a ‘scene’ where the eggs are all doing something together. (My scene set-ups are included in the lessons as well as pictures of what the scenes look like.) When the students come in to class give them some time to look at the scene. They like to ‘ooo and ahhh’ and laugh at what the eggs are doing so I give them some time to enjoy it. I pretend the eggs move around and do things when the students aren’t in the room, and I deny creating the scenes (even though the students know that I do it!). The kids find this hilarious and can’t wait to come in and see what the eggs did.

My third grade teacher did something like this when I was in third grade. I remembered loving it so much that when I started teaching third grade I searched and searched the internet for something like it, but I couldn't find anything so I created it myself.

If you like this unit, check out another writing unit of mine for this grade level: Literary Essay Unit! 10 Scripted Writing Workshop Lessons