Water for Schools
Menu

Worksheet Grade 8 English Language Arts

Revising a Storm Night Draft on Tallow Street

A grade 8 ELA worksheet in which students revise a flat narrative draft about a flooded storm drain, adding dialogue, sensory detail, and transitions.

Objectives

  1. Students will revise a narrative draft by adding dialogue and sensory description.
  2. Students will use transitions to show how much time passes between events.
  3. Students will write a reflective ending that replaces a flat closing line.

Vocabulary

Key words: narrative, dialogue, pacing, transition, sensory detail

Teacher overview

The draft on this worksheet is fictional, with accurate facts and a deliberately flat telling. Every sentence is short, every verb is ordinary, and the events are in order with nothing to mark how much time passed. Students revise it piece by piece rather than rewriting it whole, which keeps the focus on named narrative techniques instead of on general polish. The storm drain, the leaves, and the trash in the water give students concrete material to describe, and item 7 asks them to notice that the flooding in the draft has more than one cause.

Revising a Storm Night Draft on Tallow Street — Grade 8 English Language Arts
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Worksheet

Read this fictional draft by a student writer named Jonah, then answer the items below.

Jonah's draft: It rained hard on Tuesday. Water came up over the curb on Tallow Street. My little brother wanted to go outside. I told him no. The storm drain in front of our house was covered with leaves. Dad went out with a rake. The water went down after that. Then the water came back up. There was trash floating in it. It smelled bad. Mom called the town. A truck came. Two workers opened the drain. They pulled out a plastic bag and some sticks. The water went down again. We cleaned the porch. I was tired.

  1. Rewrite Jonah's first two sentences so they set the scene with two details a reader could see or hear.
  2. Add one line of dialogue between Jonah and his little brother. Punctuate the dialogue correctly.
  3. Jonah writes "the water went down" twice. Replace each one with a different precise verb phrase.
  4. Add a transition that shows how much time passed between Dad raking the drain and the truck arriving.
  5. Slow the moment when the workers open the drain. Write three sentences that use sound, sight, or smell.
  6. Replace the ending "I was tired" with two sentences in which Jonah reflects on what he noticed that night.
  7. Which detail in the draft best supports the idea that the flooding had more than one cause? Explain your choice in one sentence.
  8. Where should Jonah start a new paragraph? Name the sentence and explain why the break belongs there.
  9. Choose one sentence to cut from the draft. Explain in one sentence why the narrative is stronger without it.
  10. Write a new title for Jonah's narrative that hints at the problem without naming it directly.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: Accept any revision with two observable details. Model: "The rain started before dinner on Tuesday and did not let up. By eight o'clock the water on Tallow Street had climbed over the curb and was pushing at the bottom step."
  2. Answer: Accept any correctly punctuated exchange. Model: "Can I go stomp in it?" my brother asked, already reaching for the door. "Not tonight," I said.
  3. Answer: Accept any two different precise phrases, such as "drained away in a slow swirl" for the first and "sank back below the curb" for the second. Both must describe the same action without repeating each other.
  4. Answer: Accept any transition that marks a stretch of time, such as "For the next two hours, nothing changed" or "It was almost nine before headlights turned onto our street."
  5. Answer: Accept any three sentences that use at least two senses and stay in the moment. Model:
    "One worker set a hook in the grate and pulled. The metal scraped and then gave. A smell came up out of the opening that made my brother back away from the window."
  6. Answer: Accept any two-sentence reflective ending that goes beyond stating a feeling. Model:
    "I kept thinking about the bag they pulled out of the drain. Somebody dropped it a block away, and it ended up under our porch light."
  7. Answer: The leaves covering the storm drain. That detail shows the water rose partly because the drain was blocked, not only because heavy rain fell, and the plastic bag pulled from the drain adds a second blockage. Also accept the plastic bag and sticks, or the water coming back up after the raking, if the student explains that clearing the leaves alone did not end the flooding.
  8. Answer: Accept a break at "Mom called the town" or at "Then the water came back up." Either answer needs an explanation that the break marks a new stage in the night, such as the water returning after the raking or the family calling for outside help.
  9. Answer: Accept any defensible cut with a reason, such as cutting "We cleaned the porch" because it adds nothing after the drain is cleared, or cutting "It smelled bad" because item 5 already gives that detail a stronger place in the narrative.
  10. Answer: Accept any title that suggests the problem indirectly, such as "What Was Under the Grate" or "The Night Tallow Street Filled Up." Titles that name the flood outright, such as "The Flood," do not meet the item's condition.

Differentiation

Support

Give these students the fictional draft with the six revision points already marked in the margin and a word bank of precise verbs and transitions. Reduce the required items to 1, 2, 3, and 6, and provide a punctuation model for dialogue.

Extension

Ask students to rewrite the whole fictional draft as one continuous narrative that folds in all their revisions, then annotate three places where they changed the pacing and explain the effect of each change.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "curb," "storm drain," "grate," and "rake" with a labeled sketch of the fictional street. Provide dialogue punctuation frames for item 2, and allow items 7 through 9 to be answered orally before writing.

Extensions

Students write a second fictional narrative of about 200 words telling the same night from the point of view of one of the two town workers, keeping every fact from Jonah's draft intact while changing what the narrator can see and know.