SUBJECT: Language Arts

GRADE: Second

TECHNOLOGY: My Own Story (software)

BY: Lori Gregoire

Brainstorming Story Ideas Using Pictures - Second Grade

SOL: Writing 2.9 - The student will write stories, letters, and simple explanations.

· Generate ideas before writing.

· Use available technology.

Objective: The students will be able to generate ideas for writing creative fiction stories by visualizing and drawing pictures. Brainstorming will include setting, characters, topic, and problem, and solution/conclusion. The students will be able to write their stories to correspond with the pictures they have drawn.

Materials: Computer software: “My Own Story”, computers for each of the students or as many as possible (none of this is mandatory - the lesson could be done solely with crayons, paper and pencil)

Description:

· Write a story setting on the board. For example, “The beach”. Ask the students to close their eyes and visualize the beach, including what it sounds like. Discuss what different students think of when they visualize the beach to establish a detailed setting for the story.

· Then write some characters on the board. For example, “seashore animals”. Ask the students to close their eyes and visualize seashore animals. Have students share their animals with the rest of the class and decide on a few characters for the story.

· Now give the students a topic for what is happening in the story. “A barbecue at the beach for all the seashore animals “ Visualize and share ideas with class.

· Then give the students a problem “The barbecue gets ruined by one of the animals.” Again, visualize and share ideas.

· Do the same thing with a solution/conclusion.

· Then explain to the students how visualizing in their heads is similar to drawing their ideas. They’re just picturing the ideas in their head instead of on paper.

· With the entire class contributing ideas, write a brief story on the board to explain what is happening in the pictures they visualized.

· Then model on a computer how to use the program “My Own Story”, using the story the class has just developed. It’s not necessary to do the whole story, but just enough to show how to create pictures including settings, characters, objects, and noises, and then how to write about them.

· Give the students a few choices of settings and topics if they need help getting started, or have them come up with their own. Have them visualize things in their head and then create pictures on the computer using “My Own Story”. Then have them write about their pictures, making sure that they include descriptions of the setting, the characters, what’s happening, the problem, and the conclusion.

· After students have completed their stories, have them share their pictures and stories with a partner. Have the partners “grade” each other by writing down a few sentences about whether they included the elements listed above and whether the pictures match the writing. Then have them offer each other suggestions and make appropriate changes.

Assessment: Peer evaluations (described above), Teacher will read final copies of stories and assess them on the same criterion.