This paper was started by analyzing the mentor text from Strategies for Writers by Zaner-Bloser . Then, I asked Katie to pick out a book that she wanted to retell. We went to abcmouse.com to get ideas for a list of books that she had already read. After browsing around, she chose The Tortoise and the Hare. She proceeded by identifying the story elements. She wrote everything she could think of in the plot section. During the drafting step, she identified the sequence of the events and wrote the number next to each sentence in the order that it happened.

Next, using her story elements chart as a guide, she wrote the draft. During writing, I asked her to concentrate on writing and not to worry about wrong spellings. She would get a chance to edit it later. Words were sounded out as she worked on her draft. She tried to spell them phonetically. When she completed her draft, we reviewed them together. I provided the correct spelling and took note of other errors. I made sure to praise her when she remembered to capitalize and end her sentence with a punctuation mark.

Finally, after reviewing the paper together with me, Katie wrote the final draft and had me check it again after she was done.