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Before the Care Guide Goes Home worksheet preview

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Before the Care Guide Goes Home

Practice narrative craft through a student's experience revising an explanatory essay about caring for a classroom snail.

Grade 7ELAInteractive · Printable

Aligned toW.7.3

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What’s included

  • Single worksheet
  • Auto-graded online
  • 1 Common Core standard
  • Printable answer key
  • 12 questions
  • Classroom-ready

Details

Format
Interactive · Printable
Grade
Grade 7
Subject
ELA
Question types
Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer

About this worksheet

What students practice

  • Students establish a narrative situation and maintain a consistent point of view.
  • Students use dialogue, description, and transitions to develop connected events.
  • Students write a narrative scene about revising a classroom-pet care essay.

How to use

Read the model and examine its narrative choices. Then have students plan and draft a scene about testing the clarity of a classroom-pet care essay.

Curriculum

Common Core standard covered

W.7.3

Write a story from real or imagined events, setting up a situation and point of view, and using dialogue, description and transitions to move the plot along.

Preview

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Name Date

Before the Care Guide Goes Home

Turn a moment from writing an explanatory essay into a focused narrative.

Read as a Writer

Read the narrative about a student explanatory essay. Then examine how the writer builds the scene.

The Word Beside the Spray Bottle

1On Thursday afternoon, Tamsin placed her explanatory essay beside the classroom snail enclosure. Ms. Ibarra had asked her to explain the class's approved care routine for students joining the care team. Tamsin had checked every instruction against the teacher's care sheet. Now she wanted to print the essay before dismissal, while the computer cart was available.

2Across the table, Yusuf uncapped a pencil and began reading. Tamsin straightened the stack of spare paper beside the printer. She kept one finger on the print button because she hoped he would find nothing to change. The enclosure lid clicked softly as Ms. Ibarra checked that it was secure.

3“Make the enclosure wet,” Yusuf read from the essay. He glanced at the spray bottle. “Do you mean spray until water collects at the bottom?” Tamsin pulled her hand away from the keyboard. “No. That's not what the care sheet says.” She reached for the bottle, then stopped. Nobody needed to spray anything; they needed to understand the sentence.

4While Yusuf waited, Tamsin compared her essay with the teacher's instructions. The care sheet described keeping the enclosure appropriately moist, not flooding it. She had shortened that explanation to save space. On her screen, wet suddenly looked less like a useful direction and more like a question she had forgotten to answer. She deleted it. The cursor blinked in the gap.

5“Tell me what you would actually do,” she said. Yusuf read her revised sentence, which directed the care team to follow the teacher's moisture-check and misting instructions. This time, he pointed to the care sheet instead of reaching for the bottle. “I'd check this first.” Tamsin nodded, but she did not return to the print button. She slid the rest of the essay toward him. “Try the next section, too.”

6By dismissal, pencil brackets crowded the margins. Some marked words that needed explaining; others marked steps that were already clear. Tamsin saved a new version and shut the laptop. Tomorrow she would finish the revisions. As she carried her draft to her backpack, she turned its clean title page inward, leaving Yusuf's untidy questions on top.

1.
At the start of Yusuf's review, what does Tamsin want most?
  • A. To persuade Yusuf to take over the classroom care team
  • B. To finish printing without having to revise her essay
  • C. To replace the teacher's care sheet with her own routine
  • D. To demonstrate the care routine before Yusuf reads
2.
In these sentences from paragraph 2, underline the sentence that directly reveals Tamsin's hope that the review will require no changes.

Across the table, Yusuf uncapped a pencil and began reading.Tamsin straightened the stack of spare paper beside the printer.She kept one finger on the print button because she hoped he would find nothing to change.The enclosure lid clicked softly as Ms. Ibarra checked that it was secure.

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