Realistic Fiction Stories Underway...

Towards the end of last week, students began planning out their Vermont animal realistic fiction story. After reading an abundant amount of realistic fiction stories, the children had a wealth of knowledge and ideas to begin drafting out their own rendition. The hardest part of all - was not coming up with an idea - but focusing on one problem having to choose their favorite. The children came up with so many different renditions of stories. To help them focus, students completed a story map - complete with ideas they planned to include about the character, setting, problem, and solution. On Friday, as a class, students generated lists of "WOW" words on anchor charts that had to deal with time, place, season, weather, and nature element. Today, after reviewing these words, students referred back to their planning sheets, and visualized what the setting looked like at the beginning of the story and completed a crayon resist watercolor illustration - complete with their choice of techniques (sponge, scratch, saran wrap, and or salt).  Tomorrow, students will use these pictures and "wow" word anchor charts to do complete their description of the setting.