Welcome to this Lesson:

Unique Imaginary Friends

writing original adventures
about imaginary sidekicks

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant Barbara Laber at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.

The mentor text:

Ted is a wonderful series of adventures that ends with a father and son discovering they both have the same imaginary friend.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

The writer will, first, create an original imaginary friend, inspired by Ted from Tony DiTerlizzi's wonderful picture book.  The writer will then think of an ordinary activity done on a daily basis, like feeding the family dog.  The writer will write about doing the ordinary activity, but he/she will pretend that the activity is being done with the imaginary friend that has been created. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; an original and detail-filled story is what students will be encouraged to create.  The support trait in this assignment is word choice; DeTerlizzi celebrates his love of words by creating new ones that don't even really exist, and students can be encouraged to try this same technique.

Recipient of the NNWP's
Excellent Writing Lesson Award:

Because of the quality of its resources and ideas, this WritingFix lesson was selected by the Northern Nevada Writing Project as January 2010's Writing Lesson of the Month. It was e-mailed to thousands of teachers who are members of the NNWP's Writing Lesson of the Month Teacher Network.

To access all past lessons, click here to visit the NNWP's webpage. You can start receiving all the new ones my creating a profile on-line at our site-sponsored Ning.