Graphic organizer Grade 10 English Language Arts
A Summer on the Brinker Well Crew: A Narrative Organizer
A grade 10 narrative planning organizer for point of view, event spine, interior thought, and the closing turn, with a completed exemplar set on a well service crew.
Objectives
- Students will choose a point of view and tense and hold both across a planned narrative.
- Students will distinguish events told as scene from events told as summary.
- Students will convert a telling sentence into a showing sentence with sensory detail.
- Students will plan a closing turn that is a change in understanding, not a new event.
Vocabulary
Key words: point of view, scene, summary, pacing, interior thought, sensory detail, turn
Teacher overview
This organizer plans a personal or imagined narrative in three tables: a frame that fixes point of view and the closing change, an event spine that separates scene from summary, and a craft table that converts telling into showing. The setting is a working job site, which gives students concrete material to notice rather than general feelings to describe. Two misconceptions are worth naming first. Many students plan narrative as a list of events and then add sensory detail at the end as decoration, which produces description that sits outside the story. Many also assume the turn at the end must be a dramatic event, when at this grade the stronger move is a change in what the narrator understands about something that already happened.
Organizer
Halstow County, the Brinker Well Service crew, and the households described here are fictional. Complete every cell before drafting.
Part 1. Frame
| Slot | Write here |
|---|---|
| Point of view, and why this story needs it | |
| Verb tense | |
| Where and when the narrative opens | |
| What the narrator wants at the start | |
| What the narrator understands at the end that they did not understand at the start | |
| One object that appears at least twice |
Part 2. Event spine
| Event | Scene or summary | One thing the narrator notices | What the narrator thinks and does not say | How this event moves toward the turn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ||||
| 2 | ||||
| 3 | ||||
| 4 | ||||
| 5 |
Part 3. Craft moves
| Move | Write here |
|---|---|
| Telling sentence to be replaced | |
| Showing revision of that sentence | |
| Second telling sentence to be replaced | |
| Showing revision of that sentence | |
| Four lines of dialogue that carry information the narrator will not state directly | |
| The last sentence of the narrative |
From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.
Completed Exemplar
The scenario: a tenth grader spends a summer as a helper on the Brinker Well Service crew in Halstow County, riding along while the crew pulls and resets pumps in household wells during a dry July. Every name and household below is fictional.
Part 1. Frame
| Slot | Exemplar |
|---|---|
| Point of view, and why this story needs it | First person, past tense, told by the helper. The story is about what the narrator failed to notice at the time, which only a first-person narrator looking back can deliver. |
| Verb tense | Past |
| Where and when the narrative opens | The Brinker yard at six in the morning on the second Monday in July, loading pipe onto the truck |
| What the narrator wants at the start | To get through the summer without being told twice how to do anything |
| What the narrator understands at the end that they did not understand at the start | That the crew's slowness at the Pellick house was not caution about the equipment but care for the woman who lived there |
| One object that appears at least twice | The chalk mark the crew leaves on each length of pipe to record its order in the well |
Part 2. Event spine
| Event | Scene or summary | One thing the narrator notices | What the narrator thinks and does not say | How this event moves toward the turn |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Loading pipe in the yard before sunrise | Scene | The chalk squeaks, and the marks smear where the pipe is still wet with dew | That the marking is a waste of ten minutes | Establishes the narrator's impatience and plants the chalk |
| 2. Three routine calls in one week | Summary | Every well shed smells the same, like hot dust and rubber | That the work is repetitive and the crew is slow | Compresses time and sets the pattern the Pellick call breaks |
| 3. Arriving at the Pellick house, where the pump has failed | Scene | The kitchen tap is left open and dry, and a row of filled jugs stands by the door | That the jugs mean she has been out of water longer than she said | Raises the stakes and introduces the person the narrator misreads |
| 4. Pulling the pipe one length at a time while the foreman talks with Mrs. Pellick | Scene | The foreman keeps his hand on the pipe and answers her questions without looking up | That the foreman is stalling and could work faster | The misreading the whole narrative turns on |
| 5. Driving back, the foreman explains why he counted the chalk marks aloud | Scene | The chalk dust has worked into the creases of the narrator's hands | Nothing, for once | Delivers the turn without stating its meaning |
Part 3. Craft moves
| Move | Exemplar |
|---|---|
| Telling sentence to be replaced | It was really hot and I was tired of the job already. |
| Showing revision of that sentence | By ten o'clock the pipe was too hot to hold above the chalk mark, and I had started counting the lengths left in the well instead of the ones already out. |
| Second telling sentence to be replaced | Mrs. Pellick was worried about the water. |
| Showing revision of that sentence | Mrs. Pellick asked twice whether the pump would be back on before dark, and both times she looked at the jugs by the door instead of at the foreman. |
| Four lines of dialogue that carry information the narrator will not state directly | "How many are we down?" the foreman asked. "Fourteen." "Count them again out loud, so she can hear where we are." "She can see the pipe on the ground." "She can see pipe. She can't see the bottom of her well." |
| The last sentence of the narrative | I still mark my own pipe with chalk, and I still say the numbers out loud, even when there is nobody in the yard to hear them. |
Differentiation
Support
Give these students Part 1 with the point of view and tense rows already filled in and three of the five event rows named, so planning starts from the interior-thought and sensory columns. Provide a short bank of telling sentences for Part 3 rather than asking students to generate their own, and model the first conversion aloud.
Extension
Ask these students to complete a second Part 1 frame that shifts the point of view to the foreman and to write the same fourth event from his side in one paragraph. Then have them explain in three sentences what the first-person helper narration can do that the foreman's version cannot, and what it gives up.
ELL supports
Pre-teach pull a pump, length of pipe, foreman, and shed with photographs or a labeled sketch of a household well. Provide a bilingual glossary of the five column headings in Part 2, allow the interior-thought column to be written in the student's home language before translation, and supply sentence frames for the showing revisions: "By ___ the ___ was ___, and I had started ___."
Extensions
Have students interview an adult who does physical work with a daily routine and ask what a newcomer usually misunderstands about the job in the first week. Ask them to plan a second narrative on that answer using the same three tables, keeping the turn as a change in understanding rather than a new event.