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Home : 2002 : April : 8

writing
By shelley martelli

I have several ideas that I will briefly mention. If you are interested in any of them, I will expand. I also have good professional resources for you that may help you out and they aren't too lengthy to read.

Start using
any fictional literature you use as a read aloud. Before you read the book, construct a chart that has the character and setting (beginning), problem/what happens in the story (middle), and the solution (ending). Do alot of just discussion. ie. What happened first in the story? After that, what did the character do? etc. Just keep using this chart for any fictional story you read.

Since you will reuse it, use butcher paper and laminate it. Once you have used it several times, do a minilesson on retelling the story you did the chart for. In the children's words, rewrite the story with the same elements as in the chart--pointing out that we need characters, a place the story takes place, something that happens and how the story ends.

After you do some rewritings of familiar stories, make up other stories with your class. We do "what if" stories occassionally. ie. What would happen if a monster came to our class. The students decide who the character is, usually they want the setting to be our classroom/playground. What does the monster do? They said the monster broke the door down and took them out to recess. Their ending was that one of our students got stuck up in the tree after swinging way too high. The ending stated that the principal had to come out and take the monster down to her office. However, the monster ended up being one of our new students and learned how to behave appropriately at school. Just come up with different weird scenarios and children really take off with it. For example, what would happen if you woke up one moring and there was water everywhere...so high that you had to swim to go anywhere? What if your bedroom was so full of candy that you couldn't get out? What if our class took a fieldtrip to the moon?

Model alot of these stories together befroe you expect the students to write them!! Students begin to see that a story could have many possiblitlites.

You could come up with 4 sentence stories and then write each sentence on construction paper. Give the sentences to students and have them stand up and put them in order with a beginning, middle and end. Come up with different endings so students can see what the different versions sound like.

You can also make beginning, middle and end books by using two pieces of white typing/copy paper. Put one in the back behind the other slightly higher than the front one. Fold it over until you make three different areas for the beginning, middle and end. The top page could be the title page. We did this around christmas with the Gingerbread Man. We did the story elements chart before the students made their own book and I make a book as an example before they did their own.

Here are some helpful resources that I have read/am using:

1. Teaching Young Writers: Strategies That Work (Scholastic) I just bought it and it is very helpful and gives ideas for minilessons and teaching different levels K-2.

2. Primary Writer's Workshop: 50 Minilessons to Improve Writing by Carol Kieczykowski (Fearon Teacher Aides)

3. Literature Based Mini Lessons to teach Writing by Susan Lunsford (Scholastic)

Carson Delosa sells beach balls with Character, setting, who, what where when questions. You get two in a pack and it's only a few dollars. Very reasonable. You could read a story and they pass the beach ball to a student--the student has to point to one of the areas on the beach ball and answer the question. It's engaging for the kids and it reinforces the parts of the story. You can find this a a teacher resource store like Teacher Heaven, etc.

I am a second year teacher, teaching first grade. I focus on finding new writing material to read that gives me ideas for minilessons. I have minilesson ideas I printed off the internet. If you email back, I will try to find the website and give it to you. I hope you can follow my message--I am writing in a hurry but excited to share what I could.

Shelley