As a kick-off to our upcoming "Young Author's Night", all of the first grades held a writer's workshop. Esther Hershenhorn, a Chicago author whose award winning titles include Chicken Soup by Heart and The Confe$$ion$ and $ecret$ of Howard J. Fingerhut, facilitated this workshop to give our first graders the tools to discover their good stories and write them well.
Using the parallel of making chicken soup, Esther showed the first graders the elements needed to write a good story, i.e., character, setting, activity, feelings, problem, solution, and details.
When all of these elements are combined and allowed to "simmer", the result will be a great story!
Using the story map categories above, our first graders identified some ideas that could become a story. When Mrs. Hershenhorn left, the first graders and myself continued the writing process to create our first classroom story. Using Microsoft Word and our projector, every first grader contributed a sentence to the story. The first graders then decided they wanted to illustrate their new story; so the story was retyped so each first grader could draw an illustation to match their part of the story. The first graders then thought of several titles for our finished story. Although all were great, only one could be chosen. The first graders voted and the winner was........
Enjoy!
updated: August 04, 2008
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