This Lesson's Title:

Beyond Once Upon a Time... or One Day I...

revising ordinary sentences into strong leads, then launching an original story that uses them.

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Jenelle Sumrall at an AT&T-sponsored in-service class for teachers.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book Crispin: the Cross of Lead by Avi. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 1 of the book.

Check out Crispin: the Cross of Lead at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Students are so used to hearing stories that start with the words Once upon a time…and when writing their own stories, they often begin with these same words or with variations like One day I... This writing lesson challnges students to transform an ordinary introductory sentence into an extraordinary introductory sentence. Students, then, create teh story that would follow their powerful introduction. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is organization; the writer’s goal is to begin his/her writing by exploring strong leads that would grab the reader's attention. The support trait in this assignment is word choice; once students have grabbed the reader’s attention with a good introduction, they will keep the reader’s attention by using color and texture words within their original stories.