From our whole group realistic fiction mini-lessons and from our independent reading immersion and close study of chosen realistic fiction, we've created this noticings chart of this genre.

Class Realistic Ficiton Noticings Chart

Realistic Fiction Noticings Chart

By:  Bonnie Cumbo

1.  The characters do real things that can happen in real life.

2. The characters could be real and they can be compared to each other.

3.  The characters play together.

4. The setting is outside and could be a real setting.

5. We could tell the season was fall because leaves were falling and the story mentioned that.

6. The characters have real characteristics.  Ex. Henry wears a coat and Mudge grows a coat.

7.  Henry and Mudge are friends and real people consider their pets to be their friends.

8. The moon in the story can look like a real moon.

9.  Henry and Mudges' ears change when the wind blows and that can happen in real life.

10.  We do not see any rhyming words in this realistic fiction story. 

11.  Henry and Mudge spend a lot of time together and real people wit real pets spend a lot of time together.

12.  Henry and Mudge do not talk to each other. There is no dialogue in this story. I wonder if that happens in all realistic fiction. 

13. In Wilson Sat Alone, there is dialogue.  The characters do talk to each other.

I also wanted to create a noticings chart about my student's realistic fiction pieces.  These noticings will "drive" instruction for writing in the future for whole and small group instruction.  My noticings were:

1.  Many students need to include transitional words in their story.

2.  Many title have words that need to capitalized.  Some need to be changed to lowercase.

3.  Many students began writing their piece about themselves and we had to discuss the fact that that is writing in the auto-biography genre.

4.  Many students needed to space between words.

5  Some students did not have complete sentences.

6.  Several students had to be reminded to refer back to their circle map to remember new details to write about from their brainstorming.

Realistic Fiction Inspired Writing