We have been working hard in our writer’s workshop. I have been using a new program, Units of Study by Lucy Calkins, and have been really enjoying it. We have been working on the narrative unit and have been writing small moment stories. The unit encourages students to write narratives about smaller moments instead of large events.
Today we learned to think of our small moments as seed stories. I taught the students that topics such as “Our Family Trip”, “My Day at School” or “Sports” is a watermelon story. It is huge and hard to write about. You either write and write and write and write, or you do not expand on details. We then used our SMART board to drag seeds off of a watermelon. We talked about all the tiny seed stories that could come out of one of those watermelon stories. For example, if you were writing about “My Day at School” you could write a story about driving to school, unpacking your backpack, morning work, Daily Five, snack, read aloud, spelling, etc!
We will continue more work on seed stories tomorrow. I think the concept stuck with the class. We didn’t want to put away our work when writing was done!
