Teachable Texts

9. Dogteam by Gary Paulsen

July 5, 2009 at 4:12 pm Leave a comment

Retell: A moonlit night inspires the narrator to take his dogs on an exciting night ride.

Topics: dogs, dog sledding

Units of Study: personal narrative, content-area writing

Reading Skills: envisionment

Writing Skills: using active verbs, zooming in on a small moment, incorporating sensory details, adding suspense, inserting commas and semicolons, repetition

My Thoughts: Dogteam reads more like prose.  In addition to including beautiful imagery, Paulsen’s book has many examples of how writers use all senses to describe a moment in time.  Though I would categorize this as a personal narrative, one could also use this as a mentor text for writing nonfiction poetry.

Entry filed under: Male authors, Picture Books. Tags: commas, content-area, dog sledding, dogs, envisionment, nonfiction poetry, personal narrative, repetition, semicolons, sensory details, small moments, suspense, verbs.