Amanda Thomas, Kerri-Lynn Hickman

Materials:

Writing Prompt Pictures

Ideas Graphic Organizer

Story Writing Graphic Organizer

Teacher Outline:

Lesson 1 – Model writing

  1. Teacher picks a picture from the LA Writing Promptdocument to show to students. Using the picture, the class will brainstorm ideas for a story.
  2. Give students 2nd picture. Students look at picture, brainstorm ideas for possible stories.
  3. Students, using theStory Writing Graphic Organizer, think about the before, during and after of the picture.
  4. Guided practice: teacher will go back to brainstormed list, with the original picture, and pick out ideas for an upcoming story.
  5. Teacher and class discuss the sequence of events for the upcoming story.
  6. The teacher will model story writing for students.
  7. Students go back to their brainstorm list and recreate the process with their brainstormed ideas.
  8. Guided practice: model the edit, using track changes in Word. (run-on sentences, repetition, vocabulary, punctuation, etc)
  9. Students go back to their stories and recreate the editing process.
  10. Students get together and peer edit the stories, looking for making sense.
  11. Guided Practice: Publishing stage. Teacher will model different strategies.
  12. Students will publish their stories using the models.

Lesson 2 (several periods) – 1st person narrative

  1. Students bring in an interesting picture that features them. Teacher will have some “stock” pictures on hand for those students that do not bring in a picture.
  2. Teacher shows picture of themselves, in an interesting situation.
  3. Brainstorm ideas for story, again using the graphic organizer and writing a 1st person narrative.
  4. Students will do brainstorming for their picture; this can be done with partners. Partners can ask questions (Ex: What do you want to know about the picture?).
  5. The teacher comes back to the brainstorming list with their picture and talks about what is important, what details are needed and what can be discarded.
  6. Teacher models writing the story.
  7. Students return to their lists and do their own assessing of important points.
  8. Students write their stories.
  9. Editing: Teacher comes back to their story, looking for transitional words/phrases.
  10. Students edit their stories, looking for transitional words/phrases.
  11. Publish – using word. Teacher models how to edit (spelling/grammar)
  12. Students publish using Word.

Lesson 3 – Editing Sequence of Events

  1. Teacher and class examine the Story Writing Graphic Organizer and edit the sequence of events for the model story.
  2. Teacher then models the actual story writing for the class, using the material developed from Picture #1.

Lesson 4-5 – Story Writing

  1. Students go back to their graphic organizer and recreate the process from Lesson #3 with their brainstormed ideas. At this point, students should be writing their own stories.

Lesson 6 – Editing

  1. Teacher will model the editing process, specifically trying to add descriptive language to the stories, using “track changes” on Word, or some other format to demonstrate the process to the class.
  2. Students go back to their stories and recreate the editing process.

Lesson 7 – Peer Editing

  1. Students get together and peer edit the stories, checking that the stories make sense.
  2. Teacher will model different publishing strategies (for example Photostory).
  3. Students will publish their stories using the models.