Grandpa's Shoe Shop: A Month-Long Writing Project

My Writer's Journal

1My name is Ada, and I am in fourth grade. Our teacher, Mr. Faleolo, gave our class one month to write a true story about someone in our family. The stories would go into a class book called Our Family Stories. Every Friday, we also wrote a short journal entry about how our story was going. Each entry took about ten minutes. Here are my four entries and a note I added later.

2Week 1. I chose my grandpa, Femi, who fixed shoes in his own shop for forty years. On Tuesday after school, I interviewed him at his kitchen table. I asked him eight questions and filled four pages with notes. My favorite answer was about a bride who rushed into his shop with a broken heel an hour before her wedding. Grandpa fixed it in twenty minutes!

3Week 2. My notes were a jumble, so I sorted them into three groups: how Grandpa learned to fix shoes, a normal day in the shop, and the broken heel. Then I spent two days writing my first draft. It was four pages long, and I felt proud. Mr. Faleolo told us to put our drafts away for a few days before we read them again.

4Week 3. When I took my draft out on Monday, I noticed problems I had missed before. My beginning was dull: "This story is about my grandpa." I also had a whole page about Grandpa's favorite soup, and it did not belong in a story about his shop. Then my partner, Ezra, read my draft. He said the broken heel was the most exciting part, but he could not picture the shop. I made three changes. I cut the soup page. I began my story with the bride rushing through the door, since that part was the most exciting. I also added the smell of leather and the tap, tap, tap of Grandpa's hammer so readers could picture the shop.

5Week 4. I checked my spelling and punctuation and wrote a neat final copy. Then I drew Grandpa's shop for my page in the class book. Our story project is finished!

6Note added two weeks later. Now the class book goes home with a different family every weekend. When it was our turn, Grandpa read my story twice. He said I got the sound of his hammer just right.