Dr. Pudner

8th grade publishing party

A few weeks ago the 8th grade class at St. Robert School completed their personal narrative writing assignments after a couple weeks of hard work. . Though some of the students had an extended due date because they did not get feedback, they were still ecstatic to be finished and share their work with their peers. Little did they know the challenge that awaited them. 

When the students finished their personal narratives, they had a publishing party, and it went phenomenally. They had a good time and got to hear great stories from their peers as well as eat some snacks provided by English teacher, Dr. Pudner. The students had an opportunity to share an excerpt from their narrative with their classmates. Roger, an eighth grade student, says he was pretty nervous to present as the students were “graded on our speaking and listening and it was hard for me to look at the class sometimes, but I felt pretty good.” The composition of the narrative itself was graded separately while the presentation aimed to show how the eight graders were able to present their narrative to the class. Carolina, another eight grader, comments on the publishing party too. She claims there was a lot of nervousness, but in the end “the narratives were very entertaining and sometimes emotional.” 

The class’s victory was short-lived, for after their publishing party Dr. Pudner broke the news that the class would be turning their personal narratives into pieces of investigative journalism. They had to change their story from first person to third person, remove dialogue by creating quotes from “interview subjects ”or by deleting the lines altogether, reformatting the piece, and more. Roger said that he did expect the transformation of narrative into a news article because he had checked the digital assignment notebook, so he knew that this work was coming.

The 8th grade has finished many projects beyond their Personal Narrative and have moved on now that the hard work is over they can relax for a while until the next assignment.