What is Your Point?

By: Nancy Barnhart

July 23, 2003

What is Your Point?

James Moffett

Developmental Model

Thing-information

Me-expressive Audience

James Britton

Transactional Information &

persuasive

Expression Poetic

James Kinneavy

Theory of Discourse

• To persuade--editorial, legal

• To inform--explanatory, exploratory

• Expressive--”me” centered, how you think and feel

• Artistic--novels, poetry, prose-crafting for the sake of the

beauty of the words.

Whose Story is This Anyway?

Point of View• Opinion or attitude: “From my point of view,

woman’s rights are…”

• Perspective or personal angle: “That may be true for you, but I am a student and…”

• Narrator: Whose view of the story the writer tells determines point of view. Who sees the events determines how the story will develop.

A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature

Janice Gallagher

If you didn’t think point of view was important…it dictates much of the writing. My first draft is usually linear—I just want to get the story down. In the second draft I ask myself questions suggested by Eve Shelnutt years before at The Experience of Writing. “Whose story is it? What is at stake?” Answers to those questions help me revise the point of view. I decided that “Into the Flames” was a child’s story. I needed to let the reader see the basement and the father through the child’s eyes. In subsequent revisions I asked myself which parts of what I had written were vital to the story. I also looked at word choice. If a child were telling the story, for example, would she use the word bewildered to describe her father’s face? Would a child use the word retrieve? I search for a child’s voice and expressions.

Teaching Writing from a Writer’s Point of View

Point-of-View

High quality writing results when people use writing to discover how

and what they want to say.Teaching Writing from a Writer’s Point of View

Point of view determines how we see the story.A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature

Zinsser

• Getting writers to use ‘I’ is seldom easy.

• Believe in your own identity and your own opinions.

• A writer is most natural and relaxed when writing in first person.

Winning Ways of Coaching Writing

Types of Point of View

First person Reader lives, acts, feels, and thinks the conflict as the

protagonist experiences and tells it.

Omniscient point of viewHere the writer, telling the story in third person, is all-knowing about any and every detail of action, thought and feeling--conscious or unconscious--in past, present or future. (Charlotte’s Web)

Limited omniscientHere the writer, telling the story in third person, concentrates on the thoughts, feelings, and significant past experience of only the central character or protagonist. (Little House on the Prairie)

Other Types of POV

• Feminist

• Girl/Boy

• Fairy Tales Retold

• Animal

• Wordless picture storybooks

• Look, Look Again

• …Historical

Historical Point-of-View

Although most historians aim for at least a semblance of objectivity, it is often possible to detect some degree of bias.

Another way to focus your topic is to consider your point of view. Because of bias in the evidence, most conventional histories subtly (or not so subtly) reflect the perspective of the winners in society. Studying historical events from the perspective of the underdog can shed new light.

Donald Graves

Shift your point of view to see through children’s eyes as they observe their world, describe

the classroom, and show you their neighborhood.

A Fresh Look at Writing

Activities

10-minute write--rapid, change nothing, lower your standards in order to get into the

subject.

What is your point of view? Where do you find the center of your feelings? Underline the sentence that show it the most.

Where are the facts (details) to support that feeling?

Draw a dotted line under the line or lines that most surprised you.

Donald Graves: The remarkable part about writing, if it is open to thoughts and observations without prior prejudice, is that facts creep in whose presence we knew nothing about before we sat

down to write.

A Fresh Look at Writing

Prerequisites

• Brainstorm with the class the characteristics of familiar fairy tales.

• Students will independently read fairy tales, jotting down characteristics they identify.

• Students have a concept of setting.• Students compare/contrast a film vs. a book of a

fairy tale. Which was more exciting? Which used more descriptive language? What elements of the fairy tale were different?

Activities

• Story mapping format (of old version and new version)

Title of Story Setting (when and where)

Characters (who)ProblemAction--main happenings in the story.Resolutions--tell how the problem was solved.

• Visualizing the narrating character/Decide point of viewAttributes, features, personality traits, motivations.

Modifications

GT: Use a newspaper format to write headlines, articles, classified ads, and editorials about the fairy tale characters.

Compare/contrast point of view with traditional tales vs. retold versions.

Write riddles about characters from fairy tales and share them with other classes.

ESL: Record stories orally. Use dramatization to act out the story.

References

Atwell, N. (2002). Lessons That Change Writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Bauer, M.D. (1992). What’s Your Story? New York: Clarion Books.

Card, O.S. (1988). Characters and Viewpoint. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books.

Graves, D.H. (1994). A Fresh Look at Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Lukens, R.J. (2003). A Critical Handbook of Children’s Literature. Boston: Pearson Ed., Inc.

Routman, R. (1994). Invitations: Changing as Teachers and Learners K-12. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Warner, M.L. (2001). Winning Ways of Coaching Writing.Needham Heights, MA: Allyn& Bacon.