"Can We Talk?" Teaching Dialogue

Personal narrative and fictional narrative is part of intermediate level writing, and along with this is the challenge of teaching dialogue. "Say what?" 

Over the years, I have read student stories written with multiple sets of quotation marks one set following the next on the same line and right into the next. Never mind there were several speakers somewhere in the mix (I think). By the end of the page I had long lost track of who said what and needed to grab some ibuprofen for my emerging headache!

"Let's go ride a bike" said Joe. "Okay" "where should we go" "Hey I want to go too" "Okay." "Let's all go." "I want to be in the lead." "no I do." "No. You can't." "Let's just all lead." "Okay."

Look familiar?

While I know there are tons of fabulous books that demonstrate dialogue, one of my favorite picture books to teach dialogue is My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco. 

This is one of my favorite mentor texts for teaching dialogue.

As I read the story to the class, I point out how each time a speaker changes, there is a new indented line. We discuss how it's okay to leave white space if there is a new speaker. We talk about how sometimes there is an assigned speaker, but sometimes the reader is expected to follow the sequence for a short time to know who is speaking. I show examples of assigned dialogue, unassigned dialogue, and split dialogue. We also take note of all the words that can be used instead of "said".

Types of dialogue

Then comes time to do a bit of semi-independent practice. For this task I allow students to find their own partner and sit on the floor back to back. They each have a lap sized white board to write against, a pencil, one lined loose leaf sheet of paper to share between them, and they each have a copy of "100 Other Ways to Say Said" as a resource guide. One partner starts off the conversation using dialogue just as though they were speaking to one another. I tell them to start by writing about their weekend. I've never had any group struggle with what to write back and forth. I also tell them to feel free to help their partner by reminding them (via their written dialogue) to indent or use quotation marks, for example, if they notice they are missing.

Meanwhile I am walking around the room spot-checking to be sure each group is correctly indenting each time the paper is passed back and forth, the quotations are in the correct place, and a "said" word is used followed by their name. For this exercise, they must use assigned dialogue with their name each time they write so when I look over the paper later I can see who still needs help.

Let me tell you, for the duration of this practice there is silence. #YouCanHearAPinDrop. They could do this for a lengthy amount of time and still-silence! I am not kidding. Students LOVE this activity and beg to do it again. Depending on the outcome of their papers, which I use as a quick assessment, we may need to do some dialogue reteaching and/or do another round of practice before we jump into a narrative.

If you try this, let us know how it goes and feel free to share in the comments any strategies you have found to be helpful in teaching dialogue.