Out of This World! Class Summary 2/22/16

with Michelle Cameron

 Today once again we began by reading the stories the children wrote – or revised – at home.  One issue that I’m sensing is that – in their enthusiasm to write, which I’d never want to curtail – your young writers are writing A LOT and they love commenting on everyone else’s work. This is making it a challenge to listen to everyone’s story in the time we have. So this week I initiated a new rule – three children only can critique any one writer. Of course, we’ll rotate who gets to critique, so that everyone gets a chance to be heard. 
In addition, there may be weeks where we can only hear half of the stories. I hope not have to do this, but I do want to leave enough time for new prompts and give the children a chance to write in class. 

Among today’s stories, we identified a few more issues – as well as things the children are doing well:

• There was some good use of onomatopoeia – lots of bangs, clashes, and creaks.
• It was very clear in many of the stories what the characters wanted and what obstacles they faced.
• Some stories could have benefited from more connecting details. You can help your writers improve by asking them more “why” questions.
• We don’t always need the day-to-day details, such as getting up, eating breakfast, going to school. These can bog the story down.
• It’s better to take a single conflict and build on it than to present a character that goes from one adventure to another in just one line or two.

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Building Worlds

Our world building class was quite short because we only had about 15 minutes left after everyone read. The students were asked about particular aspects of life on Earth, and then told to compare them to life on their own imaginary world. Because I don’t believe they had enough time to really imagine the new world, I’m providing a link to a PDF of the form we used (HERE). Please look this over with your student and encourage them to dig a little deeper.

Once they’ve done that, I’ve asked them to write a letter home from the world they’ve created, describing it. Some things to keep in mind as they write the letter:

• Your students are visiting the world from Earth. They should write it as themselves.
• They should use descriptive terms to really paint a word picture of the world.
• So we can hear everyone next week, let’s keep the letters short – maybe one-two pages.

I can’t wait to hear how they describe their worlds!

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