setting

Let's Write A Story!

A confession – I used to dread teaching narratives.  Just the mention of the word brought visions of the dreaded “bed to bed” tales or narratives filled with “and then . . . and then . . . and then.”  Now, with a solid plan on how to support my students, I am as excited as they are when I say the words, “Hey, friends, it’s time to write a story!”

Prior to writing a narrative, I wanted to review the parts of a story. To accomplish this task, I used the classic book, The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear by Audrey and Don Woods.   This easy-to-read and yet incredibly engaging book, contains all the parts of a story.  The students could quickly identify the characters and setting.  Most importantly, this picture book was a natural way to introduce the most crucial part of any narrative plan – What is the problem the characters are attempting to solve?  As we worked at summarizing the story’s problem, we determined that a problem must always begin with the word “How.”  Until the Mouse wanted to hide the strawberry, the Bear and the strawberry were simply a part of the setting.  Now, both were critical parts of the problem. Students easily identified the problem the little Mouse was facing; How can Mouse hide his strawberry from the big hungry Bear?  

Now it was time to write our own plan.  To begin, I provided the students with the narrative’s characters (you and your family) and setting (camping in the woods, a bear by your tent.)  Immediately the students wanted the bear to be the problem.  This led into a discussion of whether a bear in the woods was a problem or merely a part of the setting.  One student suggested we put the bear between the story’s characters and their tent.  By moving the bear and having him block the tent’s entrance, he moved from being a part of the setting to becoming the story’s problem.  The problem was written – “How can we get the bear to leave our campsite?”

Focused on the problem, it was now time to write our story’s events.  In a narrative plan, we attempt to solve the problem three different ways.  The first two solutions do not work.  It is only upon reaching the third possible solution that the characters are successful.  Knowing that our first idea is not necessarily our best, students were given two minutes to think of possible ways to get the bear to leave.  Choosing the best three solutions, students place their final, successful solution in the third column of their plan.  They now needed to think of reasons that the first two solutions are not successful.  Each of these possible solutions and the reasons they were not successful were placed in the second and third column of our plan.

As students shared their responses, I was delighted with their creativity. Their excitement in writing a narrative was evident by the energy in the room. There were sighs of disappointment as we put our plans away until tomorrow. Everyone was eager to take the next step of our narrative – writing an attention-grabbing introduction!


Writing from a Different Point-of-View

During the past few weeks, our 2nd through 5th graders have been practicing dissecting challenging prompts. We recently gave 4th grade students the following PARCC released prompt:

 Today you read the story “Sally’s Rescue.” Imagine telling the story from a different point of view. How would the story change? Rewrite the story you read from the seal’s point of view.

We were concerned that our students may see the word “Rewrite” and just change the seal and Sally within the original story. In order to focus on the objective of the prompt, we decided to review the concept of point–of–view using a familiar text told from two points of view  – The Three Little Pigs.

We began by having the students create two blank narrative plans to complete with the necessary story components: character, setting, problem, attempts to solve the problem and finally the story ending. To help focus on point-of-view, I brought in a copy of The Three Little Pigs and we quickly added the details from the story to our plan. As students were familiar with the story, we quickly completed this initial task.  Everyone was able to correctly add all the story elements to the plan. As we focused on point-of-view, students easily identified the pigs as the ones who were telling the story and solving the problem.

We then read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by A. Wolf.  Students quickly realized that the setting and characters were the same in both books.  However, as the story was being told from Wolf’s point-of-view, he was now responsible for both the problem in the story and its resolution. Students added the details from this story to their 2nd narrative plan and came to the realization that Wolf didn’t solve his problem as he was never able to attain the sugar for his Granny. Altering the point-of-view from which the story was told impacted the story’s outcome.

Now it was time to transfer this new realization to our original text, “Sally’s Rescue.” Before we could rewrite “Sally’s Rescue” we needed to understand that Sally was the main character in the original story and Sally had the problem to be solved. When we now rewrite the story, the seal will be the main character and will have a problem that needs to be solved. The characters and the setting remain the same throughout the story.

It was amazingly easy for these 4th graders to understand point of view and how it changes the problem, the attempts, and the solution of a story. Tomorrow's lesson will focus on reading the text, creating a new plan from the seal’s point of view, and writing our story starter.