Out of this World! Class Summary 2/8/16

with Michelle Cameron

Today we began by reading the stories the children wrote – or completed – at home. The enthusiasm to read was overwhelming and the stories were universally terrific. There’s a lot of great imagination and some terrific wordsmiths in this class.
Before we started reading, we set down some guidelines for both reading and listening:

• Read slowly, loudly, and with expression.
• While listening, don’t fiddle with pencils, notebooks, or anything else. (This is hard for kids of this age and I won’t call them on it unless it’s clearly distracting.)
• After reading, the author should try HARD not to talk during the critique – because if you’re talking, you’re not listening.
• When giving critique, it’s important to start with something positive.
• If you have something constructive to say, make sure you say it in a constructive way.

Your young writers offered excellent critique and often pinpointed issues that could help improve the work. Among these were:

• Dialogue – both too much and too little. Dialogue is best when it is “grounded” by setting and action. And it always brings a story to life, rather than “he told her this,” “she explained that.”
• Moving too fast from one plot point to another. We talked about the need to slow the action down and to add in smoother transitions.
• Reading too fast, too softly, and without expression. I explained that the students would have a chance to work on this as we continue to work on their stories.

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Building Character

We then discussed that creating compelling characters are a critical part of any story. Each student was given a large sheet of paper and told to begin drawing a character. There were a couple of caveats about what they could and could not draw:

• Because we are “out of this world,” the character could not be human or an animal we would find on earth.
• They needed to create a character out of their own imagination. No derivative characters, please!

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As the students drew their characters, I asked them the following questions:

• What’s the character’s name?
• How old are they? (can be just born, can be a zillion years old…)
• Do they have parents? Brothers and sisters? List them.
• What color is their hair? (If they don’t have hair, what color is their fur, or scales, or skin?)
• What color are their eyes? (How many do they have?)
• Where does the character live? (It could be an imaginary place or planet.)
• What do they like MOST to eat?
• What do they HATE to eat?
• Do they have a best friend? What’s the best friend’s name?
• Do they have an enemy? What’s the enemy’s name?
• Do they have a secret? What is it?
• What do they WANT?

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The last of these questions is where a story starts, and it should inform the entire narrative arc of a story. We talked about what Harry Potter wants (a family), and Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz (first to leave home but then to go home). 
The children then presented their characters to one another and – wow! – it was already time to end class.
For homework this week, since we’re not back for 2 weeks, I asked them to do two things:

• Improve or add onto their first story, based on what they heard during the critique.
• Start a new story about their character.

Happy Valentine’s Day and President’s Day weekend – see you all in two weeks!

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