From Ideas to Stories!

THE CHALLENGE

So you and your students have many ideas down and feel lik you are ready to pick from those ideas and turn them into stories, but wait! You find yourself with an idea and no idea how to make it into a story you love. If this is you and your students, you are in the right place. It will not neccessarily be easy, but who said writing was going to be easy? Do we not search for challenges daily anyways? If you and your students are up to the challenge of passing the iminent struggle of turning ideas into stories, read this post to find strategies to work through this!

We have all heard that Rome was not built in a day. Well, neither is the perfect story. Even a week may not be enough. Therefore, the first step (which should also be the first step when brainstorming ideas) is to throw the typical "writing process" that calls for step one on Monday, step two on Tuesday, so on and so forth until on Friday you "publish" students' works. The writing process does follow five steps, but they are not as simple as many make them out to be and, often times, steps will be repeated. You may have students on all steps at the same time. As I future teacher, I understand where that can be stressful. My experience with writing with students, and most activities for that matter, is that I prefer to have everyone on the same step, which provides me with a sense of organization. However, that is not real lefe. People work at different speeds, have different ways of writing that appeal to them, and may need to change the way they are doing things right in the middle of the process. All of this is PERFECTLY fine. As teachers, we have to accept this, in order to help all of our students be successful writers (Beth, 2018).

What to avoid when having students write. The writing process is not five simple steps to follow in order.

How the writing process actually works!

STRATEGIES FOR STARTING STORIES

Senses Chart

So now that we have settled the issue of following a strict process, let's talk about ways to turn those ideas into drafts! This step may arguably be one of the most difficult. We have an idea, but how do we add in details and how do we tell that story to our audience in the best possible way? One suggestion is to find a mentor text that appeals to the senses. From there, use the gradual release of responsibility model to show students how to appeal to the senses in their writing. A senses chart is a great way to do this! Make a category for each of the five senses. As you read through the mentor text, have students point out things they see, hear, smell, taste, and feel throughout the story. Keep a list of these items. Next you can move to teaching your students to think about the senses in their own writing. You may find it useful to begin this with a shared experience. Using this experiences, have your writers think of things that relate to the senses. I will include a senses chart "On Top of a Mountain" as an example. Hopefully that helps to clear the steps up! This trick is sure to help with phrases to be used in the writing of a piece (Dorfman, Cappelli, & Hoyt, 2017).

Senses chart for the top of a mountain

Idea Splash

Another possibility is an idea splash. This strategy requires that the writer draw a picture of a moment in time, related to the story. From there, writers write phrases of things that they were thinking at the time of the incident. This helps to gather ideas that relate to one another, but the ideas will avoid telling the story in a series of steps (Dorfman, Cappelli, & Hoyt, 2017). Included is an example using a moent in time where wild blackberries were discovered on a hike.

These are some thoughts when seeing the blackberry bush.

Visual Storytelling

Many of our writers may struggle because they struggle to use words when telling their story. A possible strategy to use here is to have writers first tell their stories using pictures (Dorfman, Cappelli, & Hoyt, 2017). This may seem a bit intimidating at first, but it can be extremely helpful for young writers. Plus, graphic novels do this all the time!

Ideally, you might not even include this many words.

FLASH DRAFTS

We must convince our young writers that just because they choose an idea, does not mean that idea must follow them throughout the entire writing process. I have found that when I write, I may write a story down and then realize it has no real point and I just do not like it. Therefore, I move on the the next story.

So, how do we keep them from getting attached? Flash drafts are one great possiblity. As a writer myself, I had to first grapple with and become content with the concept of this strategy. I must first tell you, it may not be easy, but once accepted it can be so helpful! The strategy requires that a set amount of time is given and writers write a story for that set amount of time. When time is up, the sentence is finished and writings STOPS! This was challenging for me, but who says you cannot come back to a story? This strategy is to simply decide whether or not a story is worth finishing. If the author like the way that the story is going, he or she may set aside a short amount of time later to add to the story. However, I recommend that writers, especially young writers have at least a handful of flash drafts before returning to one. This will help writers to avoid becoming attached to a story because they simply wosh to finish or do not want to start back over again (Dorfman, Cappelli, & Hoyt, 2017).

The time allotted for writing will vary depending on writer experience. Experienced writers may find that two or three minutes is adequate time to get enough of a story down, seeing as they can typically write faster. Young writers may need ten, fifteen, or even twenty minutes. Getting the time right requires knowing your writers and just how much writing they can do in a set amount of time.

Flash drafts can be derived from ideas that were mentioned in other strategies within this post, or they may come simply from an idea. This all depends on the writer and the moment. I will include some examples of both.

This is a flash draft using the senses chart.

This flash draft came from using the idea splash strategy.

Other flash drafts can come from ideas in your writer's notebook.

I hope that you find some of these strategies to be useful in your classroom! They have helped me, and I hope they help you, as well.

REFERENCES

Dorfman, L. R., Cappelli, R., & Hoyt, L. (2017). Mentor texts : teaching writing through children’s literature, k-6. Portland, Maine : Stenhouse Publishers, [2017]. Retrieved from https://login.proxy006.nclive.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=cat04042a&AN=app.b8666025&site=eds-live&scope=site

Beth, B. (2018). Mining for treasure, sharing ideas, and learning to teach [Google Slides]. Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12I9YXjVuZRmnwrxV_knL_B0oEwUOiDMn