Spring is here and many of us are emerging into the sunshine and fresh air from a cold winter spent indoors dreaming of the warmer weather which makes this the perfect time to capture the excitement of the season and channel it into narrative writing with your students.
It seems like everywhere I look I see children running around outside playing. Their arms outstretched, zooming across a field of green grass pretending to be airplanes, astronauts, birds, and superheroes. When you're young, there is no limit to the imagination but the fun doesn't have to be restricted to the playground or the park. Bring it into your classroom and use it!
All good teachers know that the key to engaging students in any activity is by making it fun and connecting it to something that the kids can relate to. Therefore, teaching your students how to use their imaginations to capture their stories is the perfect way to get kids excited to write while adding a whole lot of that (oh, so important) fun into your writing block.
In the springtime classrooms usually begin focusing on life science-flowers and plant-life, insects and life cycles, animal habitats and behaviors, sea-life and ecosystems, etc., thereby laying the foundation for the perfect narrative writing unit focusing on plants, animals, and insects.
For example: I love bees. I think bees are fascinating creatures who are often misunderstood because of the whole "stinging" thing. These little insects are major contributors to our environment and are a great tie-in with Earth Day, Arbor Day, and the concepts of Recycle, Reuse, Renew, Reduce (which are issues close to my heart), so in the springtime I do a huge bee unit. I use the science of bees as a way to get my students interested in these amazing little insects and all the ways that these tiny buzzing superheroes affect our lives. Then, I take that information and use it as the basis for my narrative writing unit.
So, to help show you and your students how to transfer those stories from the playground to the page while connecting writing to other academic areas (like science), I have included four of my favorite tricks of the trade!
1. CREATIVE PLAY
Typically when we think of creative play (or dramatic play), we think of really young students-Pre-K and Kindergarteners-but creative play is great way to get students to use their imaginations no matter how old they are. Creative play is acting-engaging in the role of the character, subject, animal, or object by living their life for a short period of time.
So, going along with the "bee theme"...
One idea could be to turn your classroom into a hive. Then, have students pretend to be bees. The students can draw bee jobs out of a hat and pretend to do their jobs for five to ten minutes.
Pollinators can "pollinate" posters of different flowers around the room while others can do the "bee dance" to direct other bees to the best flowers. Foragers, or nectar gatherers, can collect nectar and transfer it to other worker bees, so they can begin the process of converting nectar into honey (You might have to get creative with this one since bees essentially vomit into each others' mouths in order to make honey. Gross, right?) or by fanning the honey in the combs to help evaporate the water in the honey and thicken it up. Nurse bees can feed the pupae or larvae. Undertaker bees can clean the hive. Guard bees can protect the hive and monitor the bees that are coming and going. Architect bees can build honeycombs (Idea: Have students use Legos, blocks, or even unifix cubes to construct the honeycombs). The queen can lay eggs (maybe, put cotton balls into the honeycombs...) while her attendants assist her and manage hive activity. You get the idea!
After the activity, students can write using their own "bee-persona" as the inspiration for narrative story describing "A Day in the Life of a Worker Bee" or "A Day in the Life of a Forager Bee". You can decide together if the stories will be realistic fiction stories depicting bees as they are in nature or fantasy stories with bee personalities and dialogue.
2. VISUALIZATION
Visualizing is also a great way to tap into your students' imaginations. Think of yourself as a yoga instructor or meditation leader talking your students through a certain bee's activities. Have the students close their eyes and imagine themselves traveling from flower to flower collecting nectar and delivering pollen. Students can use their five senses to imagine the sun on their wings, the wind pushing them this way or that way, or following the fragrant scent of a blooming flower.
3. READ NARRATIVE STORIES THAT ILLUSTRATE A PARTICULAR SKILL
Use your imagination to seek out stories that illustrate a skill you want students to try in their own writing. The good news with this one is that there is no shortage of fantastic narratives to choose from and it IS NOT necessary to read the entire book, especially if you are in upper elementary. Excerpts are an effective way of demonstrating a particular narrative skill that you want your students to incorporate into their writing without having to do an entire novel study or feeling like you have to find every skill you want to highlight in a single book. Excerpts also allow you to introduce many skills (over the course of a writing unit--not in a single lesson) to the students using different authors who may be known for certain narrative writing styles or techniques, like Roald Dahl or Louis Sachar.
Some narratives skills that are easily found in mentor texts may include:
dialogue
figurative language
hooks and introduction/exposition statements and paragraphs
word choice that influences tone and/or mood
omniscient versus first person narration
literary devices; such as:
-allusion
-formal versus information language
-alliteration
-allegory
-colloquialism
-euphemism
-flashbacks
-foreshadowing
-imagery
-personification
-juxtaposition
-metaphors and similes
-onomatopoeia
-symbolism
vocabulary that signals the passage of time, & more.
Using narrative stories and excepts is also a smart way to save time. By coordinating your reading and writing topics, you can showcase a certain skill during your language arts block and then reference back to it during your writing block. Since students will already have an understanding of the skill, you'll save time when you re-introduce it during writing time. (If you're really good, you can even co-create an anchor chart in ELA that can be used as a reference chart in writing!) Additionally, helping students make connections between reading and writing also shows students the power of their particular writing choices when they are telling (writing) their own stories.
4. MODEL YOUR OWN WRITING FOR THE STUDENTS
Use your own imagination while you model talking-through, brainstorming, and writing your own narrative story for your students. Modeling remains the most powerful (at least for me) tool in getting students excited for writing.
In my classroom, my students watch as I move through the entire writing process. They see the good, the bad, and the scribbled out. They see me grapple with taking a writing idea or topic from the beginning stages of brainstorming through the revising and editing process all the way to the finished product. I don't hide anything. I sit in front of my students and I talk out loud to myself. (Although, it's not really "talking to myself" since what I'm really doing is modeling for the kids the kind of self-talk writers do when they write.)
Watching me take a "seed" (beginning) idea through the writing process, also gets my students ready to write. They pick up on my enthusiasm and energy and become invested in my story's development AND while listening and watching me create my story, they begin crafting their own stories inside their minds and generating ideas making students eager to get those stories down on paper.
But, perhaps the best part of modeling is that the students get to see that writing is tricky for everyone (even their teacher) and it normalizes the struggle. They can see, in real-time, that they aren't the only one having a hard time working out the flow of a story, the introduction, or the dialogue...it's everyone. And, they get to see first-hand that they aren't the only one who has to edit and revise multiple times before getting their story just right...it's everyone.
And, if everyone, even their teacher, encounters difficulties before finishing a story, students begin to understand that their own struggle doesn't mean they're bad at writing. It means they are authors.
Leave me a comment to let me know what strategies you use in your classroom to help students tap into their imaginations when they write stories!
Happy Writing, my friends,
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