WRITING FICTION: BIG DREAMS AND TALL AMBITIONS

In Writer’s Workshop the students have been writing non-fiction stories. Writing make believe stories is challenging for students. In their mind their stories are rich, creative and feel pages. Getting these larger than life moments down on paper is overwhelming. The major focus of the unit is to move kids away from telling stories to showing them. A telling story reads, “There was a kid who was fighting zombies. Than the zombies attacked the kids became president and the zombies were destroyed.” The story zooms by. Showing requires students to zoom in on powerful moments and describe them in detail. The writer than puts these small moment scenes together in order to create a story.