Winter Holiday Story - Part 2

Last week I described my basic procedure for teaching kids to write a winter holiday story. I started the process this past week and I will now describe how it's going.

Day I 

We created a list of problems for a story with a winter holiday theme. The kids seemed to be in a particularly inspired frame of mind, which led to a lively session. It’s necessary for you, the teacher, to maneuver the discussion in such a way that you get a variety of suggestions. Don’t be afraid to distil out weak ideas.  With a little tact you can encourage your students to think hard, and to be original. If they get hung up on some basic idea, tell them we need to change to a new idea. An important part of the process is for you to suggest examples too. Every so often, especially when the kids offer timid ideas, I model more adventurous ways to approach story problems.  For example: Santa’s reindeer were on vacation in Hawaii and refuse to go to the North Pole in December.
When I throw out some crazy ideas, it sparks excitement in the kids, and gets them thinking more creatively. First, they came up with ideas about Santa and various problems with the presents.  Examples: All the elves had flu; there was a shortage of toy-making materials; Santa’s sleigh had a mechanical problem; etc. The best one was the following: Because of Global Warming, the ice on which Santa’s workshop sits, melted and fell into the Arctic days before Christmas!
It was time to steer them in a different direction. Let’s think about kids and people. What would make someone unhappy or worried at this time of the year? I managed to get ideas like these: A family lost their home and had live in a shelter; all the Christmas trees were sold out .
Time to move on to something new. I said, “What are some other problems we can think of to do with winter? What do you think about when you of winter?” Someone said “snow”. Can you think of problems to do with snow? I got the usual type of response, like getting caught in a snowstorm while on a ski trip. Then someone said: Scientists were in Antarctica and they encountered aliens. This led to another student suggesting: A group of snowdragons wanted to destroy Earth. And another student came up with: The Elves invented a Time Machine!

By the end of the session I had a list of twelve pretty decent problems and a class of kids eager to get started!

Day 2  

The kids selected a problem, then did a quickwrite of a story. I told them it was a pre first draft, just to get the basic idea of a story down on paper. I gave them half an hour for this.

Day 3

They made a picture of the most important setting in the story, then wrote a paragraph describing the setting. I reminded them to use their senses and to avoid starting sentences with “I saw …”, “I smelled …”, etc.

Day 4  

We had a quick discussion of how to describe a character. I read some examples of character descriptions from the holiday picture books I’d been reading in class. Then they wrote a description of either the main character, or an important character in the story.

Day 5

The problem – frame-by-frame

I had not done this lesson with my students before, so I needed a full hour for the task. Because this is an advanced skill, I felt the best way to teach it would be to model the process using a student’s problem. After asking random kids to tell about the problem in their story, I made a selection.

Me: What’s the problem in your story?

Student:  Santa’s reindeer had disappeared.

Me:  OK. We are going to imagine that we are watching a movie of the problem as it unfolds. Let’s picture the first scene. I am going to draw 6 frames on the board and we are going to write down exactly what went on in sequence.  So, what happened first? Who discovered the reindeer were missing?
Student: An elf.

Me: What was his name? And tell me exactly how he made the discovery.

Student: His name was Gorgy. Gorgy went to the stables and the reindeer weren’t there.

Me: Okay, let’s back up and picture the scene. Class, we are all going to help Sara with this, so please give us your ideas. Gorgy leaves his cottage, or Santa’s workshop and is walking toward the stables. Does he notice anything before he reaches the stables? Can anyone tell me?

Second Student: He sees hoof-prints in the snow.

Me: Great. Let’s fill out our first two frames. Gorgy steps out of the workshop and walks toward the reindeer’s stables. He notices hoof-prints in the snow. Picture this scene - as if you are watching a movie. What's his expression? What is he thinking now?

Third Student: He is puzzled and he races to the stables.

Me: Good. Let’s write that down in our third frame. What’s the next thing he sees? Picture this new frame. What does Gorgy see? How does he act?

Fourth Student: The stable door is open. Gorgy panics.

Me: Excellent. You guys are getting the idea. Let’s put that in our fourth frame and fill out the rest of the frames.

With student help I wrote: When Gorgy got to the stables he saw hay scattered all over, but no reindeer. In shock he ran to tell Santa what happened.

We have just taken the most important part of Sara's story and wrote details to help the reader understand the story and the problem better. Now it’s your turn to do a frame by frame description of your problem. Picture it scene by scene as if you are watching a movie. Imagine you are there experiencing it.

I have to say, about half the class got grumpy about this task. I quickly realized that this was not an easy skill for third graders. I worry when I push my students too hard. As I walked around the classroom helping kids, I got the impression that they understood what to do in theory. This was great. Obviously not everyone is going to get it the first time. But the next time we do a story they will be more receptive to this part of the writing process. On a positive note, I have a significant number of strong writers who embraced the frame-by-frame exercise.

After coming up with some semblance of a frame by frame of the climax of their story, the kids put it into a paragraph.

Next week the kids will write out their first draft of a story plugging in the strong paragraphs they worked on this week. I will then show them some simple revising techniques before they go to the publishing phase.