Monday, October 18, 2010

A creative way to make kids write their own story

Part of our Language Arts Curriculum is story elaboration.  We have done several of this, but this story that Ice made is extra different, extraordinarily creative.

Part of the activity is to come up with a "boring" story then will let the kid think of ways to describe and/or elaborate on it.  First, I'd let him draw the scenes on his imagination notebook (drawing book), then I'll be his scribe.  Being a scribe means, I will just write down his story word per word.  I will not even suggest words or phrases but will just guide him as to what should go next after each part of the story (ex. what's next, then what happened?, which part of the house? etc).

So our story started with:
"Pat built a house. The house collapsed."
Ice laughed and said it was boring.  The reaction I expected to conjure some creative ideas from him.  He started to draw the scenes and I, the scribe wrote down my little writer's story.  Here's what he came up with.  He's only 5, by the way.  So please excuse the grammar as I did not edit it so that soon when we review his story again, he'll be the one who will improve the story himself.  Which we'll do in our future seatworks.

Pat Built a House Being Destroyed
By: Ice

One day, there's a man named Pat and he wants a new home.  He doesn't want his old home anymore because his old house looks like our neighbor's house. :D  Then, he made his new home because he's good at making houses now.

Pat built his house made of bricks.  He also got a globe on top.  He got six floors of bricks.  It looks like a brick house because it is very nice and it has triangle windows so he can see what's down there.

One day, there's a tidal wave and destroyed the house.  Pat became a little bit sad.  He built another house in the ocean so no tidal wave can hit it because he can drive it with a steering wheel.  There's an alarm on it which will turn on when there's a tidal wave coming like "THERE'S A WAVE COMING! THERE'S A WAVE COMING! NING, NING, NING, WAAH, WAHH!!!"  Then, the steering wheel that is shaped like a globe will turn the house.

The end.