Story Magic Class Summary 9/22/14

with Michelle Cameron

Treasure Box

We started out today by talking about our “red words” – and the kids brought some great ones in! We added them to our World Bank, which we’ll keep adding to – and use sometime in the future. 

Several of the students brought in stories, either ones they’d started last week in class and finished at home or original stories. I reminded everyone about our rules for reading and critiquing. Some of the aspects of their stories that we commented on:

• The use of alliteration to make writing more interesting

• Recognizing (especially when reading aloud) that you need to explain further – which means it’s worthwhile going back and adding those clarifying details. 

• Using dialogue in a story really helps it come to life

• Knowing what the story’s problem is and whether it has been resolved or if you need to come back and resolve it.

We then worked on the day’s writing. Each student selected an object from my treasure box. We reviewed the five senses:

• Seeing
  
• Hearing
  
• Smelling
  
• Tasting 
  
• Touching

And had a discussion of how each of them would enhance the description of the object, slowly considering what they saw, heard, smelled and touched (no, we didn’t taste!) with each object . After sharing our ideas out loud, the children made a list describing their objects. 

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Finally, we wrote stories about how each treasure made their way into my treasure box. As usual, not everyone finished their stories, and I’ve asked them to finish them up during the week. 

Our word bank should continue to grow. Since we couldn’t taste our objects, I asked them to bring in two “tasting” words. I have a feeling we’ll be hungry when we hear these next week!