"Then I would rattle off all the things that I was absolutely certain kids experienced every day: getting up in the morning, getting dressed, coming to school. After all, if you’re breathing, you are experiencing. LIFE is experience"
BethMooreSchool (TwoWritingTeachers, 2015).
One of hesitations in teaching writing I believe for teachers is helping students find their stories to write about. How can we help Johnny get started? Betsy isn't writing anything? Caleb says he doesn't have any stories to write about?
This quote resonates with the topics discussed in this week’s blog. It expresses the mindset that we have to have as teachers. We have to accept any student’s story and support their sharing of a story with excitement and encouragement. Everyone has experiences…it’s just finding them in every student may be hard at first in using writer’s notebooks. To read more about why narrative writing matters click here: https://twowritingteachers.org/2015/10/07/why-narrative-writing-matters/
You can brainstorm with students every day and after you leave their desk area they have frozen again in what to do. I was this student. I thought my teacher is on a roll with coming up with ideas, but as soon as they leave my desk and I have to come up with more ideas, I freeze up. Sometimes it was frantically of seeing other students aggressively using their pencil as though they have a single sentence on paper. Their pencils never left the paper. So how do you get students to move on to find their personal stories? There are so many options to support students in finding their stories, but I want to share the ones that I feel like if I were back in elementary school I wish I could have used to help me.
Option One: 100 things I love
There is nothing more exciting than to write and share about something, someone, or some place that you love. Below is even an example of my writer’s notebook of the 100 things I love. Now of course in a classroom, it depends on your grade level, time, and expectations for your class. There is no way that you can give students 15 minutes to write 100 things they love. Well maybe some students can. You can start with 10 things I love, 25 things I love, and so forth and so on. This strategy is an approach that can be revisited several times during writing time, just as you as a teacher revisit mentor texts. This strategy provides students choices in deciding what they love.
When you love something, it normally provides senses and emotions to why you love that something, someone, or some place. By having students list these words or short phrases, it becomes a place in their writer’s notebook that you can help students go back to and ask:
Can you tell me why you love hubba bubba bubble gum? And as they start to tell you, you continue questioning them that lead to a story that gets you to pause, tell them to hold on, and to write it down for you to read later.
As you can tell my writer’s notebook list is FULL of a variety of topics I could easily write a personal narrative, essay, letter, or even poem about. Who doesn’t want to read a detailed poem about how I can recite several lines from “Pride and Prejudice”?! It’s topics like this that also allows teachers and writers about each other. Teachers model making their own 100 things they love in front of their class to give them ideas. It becomes personal. And this personal trust between teachers and writers can help them share details of topics for future personal narratives.
As part of a poetry assignment in sixth and seventh grade I had to write a poem about my favorite things. The first (6th grade) was about smiley faces and the second (7th grade) was about a special blanket. See below!
Option Two: Creating a Hand Map (Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R., 2017)
Depending on the grade level, I believe this strategy can be very beneficial to young writers. When I was student teaching in fourth grade, emotions of anger, frustration, embarrassment, sadness, loneliness, excitement, happiness, etc. was an everyday occurrence. So what you may ask? All students have theses emotions. Well how about helping them use these emotions as a stepping stone for writing ideas?
A hand map is an easy technique for students to complete. My model of my personal hand map is below. I used the emotions of fear, nervousness, excitement, anger, and happiness as my target emotions to bring up life experiences. It was funny using this writer’s notebook entry because it seemed that I had a lot of solid memories I could immediately think of in fear and anger first. Let me tell you…I could go on and on about how angry I was with my mom when she didn’t tell me where we were going and she tricked me into walking into a building to receive a voice lesson. I won’t spoil my small moment narrative story yet! I will include that at the end of this blog J
These emotions build the backbone of a story for students. By using this as a starting point to find topics, teachers can then build on their writing by modeling strategies such as rich descriptions, dialogue, hooks, and anecdotes to include in their writing. Teachers can also use these emotions as a connection between students by modeling times that they have felt sad, happy, or fearful to make you relatable!
Option Three: Creating Heart Maps (Dorfman, L.R. & Cappelli, R., 2017)
I have mentioned this technique of finding topics on writing in last week’s blog post, so check it out again there as well! How do students normally illustrate love? By drawing hearts of course! By using a self-made or premade template, heart maps can be a nontraditional format for students to use to list topics or short phrases about people, places, or things that mean something to them. Specifically for my heart map, I based it on places that I love! You can ask me about Rocky Knob Cabins or Colonial Williamsburg for example, and I can already think of three to five detailed small moments that I can tell you about. The point is, if students have a place that can go back to that they can visually believe that there is a story connected to things that mean to them…writing becomes enjoyable. Who doesn’t like writing about something that means something to them?
Option Four: Write about Your Name (Fletcher, R., 2001)
I showed my poem of my nickname that I have had since before I could walk. Well I had a serendipitous moment today as I was on my way to meet friends. I got behind a car that had my nickname as her license plate. She took my dream license plate!!! Well aside from that, if students could write about one thing that literally identifies them what would it be? Their name! To give students a moment to write about the history of their name, why they were named that name, stories behind their name, etc. students will become more inclined to write about it. Of course because it’s their name! No one in the class has the same exact meaning behind their name and it places something that is special to them. It also allows the teacher to demonstrate their willingness to show students support in understanding their background.
Option Five: Bits and Pieces (Fletcher, R., 2001)
Allow students to bring in a small piece of something (ticket, brochure, flower, leaf, letter, photo, etc.) that means something to them. Have them tape or glue this object into their notebook and have them write about this object. Where were they when they got it? What else did they see? What were they feeling at this time? Below is my example in my writer’s notebook! It is a coupon I got from a small fair I went to over last summer. In my writing, I describe what I used the rest of the coupons for to leave this one left. With this one little coupon, I was able to write my emotions of going on fair rides, watching world famous high divers jump into a large pool, and enjoyment of a slushy on a 98 degree day! So much just from this one yellow coupon. Imagine what your students could write if they could bring in one object!
Note: These are not the only strategies that help students find their stories! These are just some that I personally have practiced with and see students benefiting from within the classroom.
Mini lesson
Your Turn Lesson:
Using an Inverted Triangle to Find a Specific Topic
Small Moment Narrative Story
"Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know Well, now they know
Let it go, let it go Can't hold it back anymore Let it go, let it go." (sung softly and trembling)
Mom has never driven me into this dirt parking lot. I have never been to this brick building connected to a baptist church. We walk up to the side door that has a note that says "ring doorbell and someone will assist you." As my mom rings the doorbell I finally ask, "Mom what are we doing here? Is this part of your Meals on Wheels?" she didn't answer.
"Mom! Why are we here?" I asked.
"Shhh Shannan stop. Here comes someone," she said.
The lady who let us in was fairly young and seemed very nice by the short conversations she had with us. We got to a hallway up the stairs where there were scattered musical instruments in the hallway. An older lady was already there sitting with a young toddler in her lap.
"Shannan you will be next. I'm running a few minutes behind and we will start your voice lesson," she said.
My heart dropped down my chest. I swallowed hard with tears forming in my eyes.
"Mom! I am not doing this! I am not doing this!" I firmly stated staring directly into her eyes. I was hoping she saw my anger and fear.
After a few minutes of begging my mom with every excuse I could, the voice instructor called my name from the music room. I entered hesitantly. She told me to stand behind the black music stand as she was frantically looking through music sheets.
"Ah-ha here we go. Let's try this!" she said excitedly. She handed me a book with Frozen characters.
She opened it to the page with the song "Let it Go" and started playing the piano. She asked me to sing along with her. I stood there silently. I think she did this because she saw how scared I was. She continued to ask me to sing vocal cords with the piano each time. I tried to be brave, but I couldn't each note I sang came out of my mouth silently. I was shaking and had tears coming out of my eyes the entire time. Not a clear singing voice could be heard. The 30 minutes seemed like eternity. I left that building not ever to go in it again.
References
Dorfman, L.R., & Cappelli, R. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children's literature, k-6. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.