Story Magic Class Summary 10/20/14

with Michelle Cameron

Setting Sail

Today’s word collection – house words – gave us some great words, including a number of door knobs. Who’d have thought?

After hearing a couple of new or continued stories today – and it’s always great to start off with your young writers’ work – we moved on to the project that will take the next couple of weeks. It’s a project we at The Writers Circle call “Setting Sail” – setting off on a journey. This particular project is a good one for kids who are still easing their way into the fundamentals of writing, as it contains a number of shorter writing projects rather than a long, concentrated chunk of time – and also incorporates a number of craft activities to help the kids learn.

The first thing everyone had to do was decide on a destination and why they wanted to go there. The choices could be anywhere on the planet or beyond or anywhere imaginary. The one restriction I placed was that it could not be Hogwarts or the product of any other author’s mind – it had to come from their own. The destinations chosen were as diverse as the kids – beaches, Graceland, and ancient Egypt, to name a few.

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The students drew a map of their destination, labeling landmarks and other points of interest. They then drew up a list of what they would pack – an unusual number of them opting to take livestock along with them, which is a unique way to keep food fresh. They selected names for their vessels and created vehicle nameplates (which we’ll use next week). And then they began to describe the characters who will be part of the story.

For Next Week...

Over the next week, I’d like them to fully describe these characters. Each one should include:

• A name
  
  
• Outward appearance, including what they are wearing
  
  
• Personality traits – such as mean or nice, active or sleepy, generous or selfish, etc.
  
  

We talked about having a maximum of four characters. I’d rather have fewer more fully described than a cast of thousands!

Next week we’ll continue our journeys.

As we’re coming up to Halloween, this week’s word collection should be spooky words. They were already talking about which ones they wanted to use on their way out to lunch!