Fun Ways to Start Writing Stories
Scaffolding

In the first semester, we were developing our G3 students' literacy skills with the help of the Daily 5 routines. Our students were very enthusiastic when it came to reading, but often the drive faded when it was time to switch to writing activities. We discussed this situation during our planning meetings and came to the conclusion that our students need more structure to be successful in their writing tasks. We also tried to select a variety of simple yet powerful fun writing activities that could be completed in a short period of time to not interrupt the order of our Daily 5 routines. 

Here are some ideas for novice story writers.

Four Corners Activity

Students used this graphic organizer. 

www.thisreadingmama.com

Four students modeled the whole procedure in front of the class. Each student had to think of a character, setting, problem and solution. Then one of the students volunteered to retell the whole story to the class.

After that, the students worked in 5 groups of four people. The timer was set and they had only 10 minutes to create their stories. All 5 groups successfully completed the collaborative task and one of the group members retold the story to the class.

When reflecting on the activity, we said that it was just a framework for a story and adding description and details will make the story much better.

The grafic organizer could also be used as a plan for the retellling of read stories and also as a plan for writing stories.

Five Columns Activity

Here is one more graphic organizer that will help your students create a fun story in 7 minutes. If you model it with a group, you will see the fireworks of ideas and hear even more suggestions and solutions than you need to fill the five columns with. The graphic organizer can be downloaded from www.thecorriculuncorner.com  .

Yannis had great ideas and I can't wait to read his full story.

Recording Special Memories

Here is yet another way to interest your students in writing. We all have special memories, we are fond of them and we like to share them. This grafic organizer can be used as a planner for a story or a story telling session.

www.thecorriculumcorner.com

All three activities can be completed in 10 minutes and can be followed by a sharing session. In 10 minutes the students enthusiastically create a solid story plan and are ready to move on and turn it into a short but remarkable story independently or in collaboration with each other.