This past week, students focused on making their small moments come to life. Students learned that when they make their characters both move and talk in their pictures and writing, the stories begin to get more exciting. They also learned that to really make a story exciting and to bring it to life, we need to hear more about character development and include feelings and thoughts of the main characters. As we read the small moment story, "Fireflies" by Julie Brinkloe, children looked for ways in which this famous author unfroze people (make them move and talk) and brought out the inside (make people feel and make people think).
Partnerships during the last few weeks helped students be thorough in describing their moment as they asked one another questions using the words, who, what, where, when, and why. Students even read their stories, acting out and making a video in their heads to determine if they included every step. Many students even tried out using quotations in their own writing and all students enjoyed finding talking marks in their own books they read.
