Realistic Fiction Writing
Over the past few weeks the children have been using what they learned during our PERSONAL NARRATIVE writing unit to help them develop a more complex style of writing - Realistic Fiction.
Modeling engaging fiction stories are crucial. We read a short chapter book called Oggie Cooder by Sarah Weeks. The story had good character development and story problems. We analyzed this book closely while enjoying the story together.
The next task was to use what we learned from listening to the book and using specific writing crafts in our own stories. Children were taught a variety of ways to plan their story. The most useful, I believe, is planning by story mountain. Please ask your child about this method.
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| Some students working together using the story mountain strategy to plot a story we read together. |
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| By analyzing short stories and how the problem in the story increasingly became more intense guides children when they plan their individual story ideas. |
Below are the teaching points I wanted to teach the children about writing realistic fiction:
Ways to plan a story with a problem and solution.
Ways to craft an effective lead and effective ending.
Ways to add detail including:
Specific character actions
Showing not telling
Information about setting
Interesting words and strong verbs
Using bit-by-bit storytelling to stretch scenes across a page
Exploding a moment
Balancing character thoughts, talking, actions, feelings, and description.
Showing that the character changed or learned something.
We will record our stories on the blog next week. I will let you know when they are ready to read.
