Chalk (an introduction to story writing)

Every year, story writing is a huge undertaking for my 3rd graders.  Luckily, the past 2 years it was omitted from the state assessment, so I could wait to teach it until very last!
In the past few years, my fellow teachers and I have written group stories.  I has lacked organization and yielded minimal success when students went to write on their own story. 
So I decided to change that!
I found this great book on one of the awesome book blogs.

Chalk by Bill Thomsom



It is an amazingly illustrated wordless book.
We went through and "read" the book.  (At least one student said, "This is a baby book.") 
They quickly realized that the story is not so simple.
Then I told the students that Bill Thomson has hired them to write the story.
We use a story organizer and go through every page again. 
The students made notes for each page.
Then they turned their organizer into the story.

When conferencing with them about their rough drafts, here is what I noticed:

**They used paragraph indents, because they had to write something on each page.
**They added dialogue.
**They used details.
**Every (yes EVERY) student even my special ed students had a complete story that made SENSE!

It was an easy PAINLESS way to introduce story writing. 

Enjoy!
EmilyK