Story Writing: What Happens Next?

This week I had the pleasure of working in a grade one/two class.  We did a writing lesson that involved using one of my favourite picture books Duck and Goose by Thad Hill.

Our goals for the lesson:
I can talk about pictures from the story to predict what the story might be about.
I can draw a picture to share my thinking and build a story to write the ending.
I can use pictures and words to tell a story and share that story with someone.

The focus on oral language at the beginning of the lesson gave the children a chance to hear other people's ideas, build vocabulary and borrow ideas from others.  We also gave the students choice in the kind of paper they used to build their story.  Some paper had many lines and a small spot for pictures and other pages had more space for pictures and labeling.  This allows the children to show their ideas in different ways and all children can share their story.

Here are a few samples from the session we had together.

This student had a very clear idea about how he wanted to present his story.  He wanted to create a book so he asked for several pages.  He put them all together and stapled them.  His cover was detailed and had the title of his story and his name as the author.  Below is just the first page of his story and he has characters talking, with quotation marks and I really like his word choice of "replied."

"Look at that egg goose" replied Duck.

As students finished their stories, they read their stories to a classmate.  To close the lesson we celebrated being authors and read some of the stories to the whole class.