Going Beyond "And They All Lived Happily Ever After."
playing with point of view while crafting a story's ending
This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant Kelly Nott and her husband Dane Nott.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Once Upon a Cool Motorcycle Dude by Kevin O'Malley. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this books' authors.
Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources:
Pre-step (before sharing the published model):Choose a boy and a girl who will embody the characters’ VOICE by rehearsing, reading, and dressing up as the Princess and the Cool Motorcycle Dude from the book. We recommend that you send a note home and/or contact the families to ensure that the students have the ability to dress up and come prepared for their part because we found that it was crucial for the initial student engagement. **Even older kids have fun playing these parts!
Step one (sharing the published model):Introduce the title of the book and the two characters (Princess and Cool Motorcycle Dude) to the class. To ensure good listening, ask the class to do the following during transitions between the two characters speaking. The girls can make a princess soft “sigh” tilting their heads sideways with two hands across their cheek and the boys make a cool motorcycle dude sound “vroom, vroom” while using their hands to pretend they are writing a motorcycle.
The two selected students (Princess Tenderheart and the Cool Motorcycle Dude) will then read the first 12 pages of the book.
After the first part of the book is read, interactively discuss and complete the story elements graphic organizer. This will lead the students to select an original problem and solution while they utilize the book's characters and setting in an original story they will be writing.
Step two (introducing models of writing): In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson. The groups will certainly talk about the organization, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might also have your students talk about the voice in the writing too.
We're looking for student samples for all grade levels for this prompt! Help us get some, and we'll send you a free resource for your classroom! Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing):Refer students back to the class's completed story elements graphic organizer. Teachers may wish to allow more advanced writers to write about an original character as seen fit. Upon completing the story elements graphic organizer, students will choose a character’s point of view, a couple of events, a solution to the story’s problem, and a “satisfying” conclusion that links back to the beginning.
They will then use the Story Conclusion Graphic Organizer to develop their ideas by adding descriptive details, dialogue, etc. From this graphic organizer, students will write a first draft of their original story ending.
If you have your students draft their stories on this two-page rough-drafting sheet, then they can self-evaluate their own organization skills using the checklist on page two.
Step four (revising with specific trait language): One tool for revision is provided below. To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts. Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5." Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.
Step five (editing for conventions): After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor. If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers. With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it. The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.
Step six (publishing for the portfolio): When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block. Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here. Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.
Interested in publishing student work on-line? We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers. This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.
Learn more about author Kevin O'Malley and his books
by clicking here!
