Classroom Activities Teacher's Guide
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Classroom Activities Teacher’s Guide Enclosed in this packet are a series of resources to help your students break down the process of story writing. Activity 1: Get Ready to Write! Get Ready to WRITE! Activity Objective: This worksheet is intended to help your students start to form ideas for potential stories. The activity provides your students with a blank page to freely develop story ideas through text and illustration. Serving as a precursor to the Brainstorming If you could sheet, this is a place for the child to draw or write topic ideas for their story. write a story about anything, what would you writeeeeee about?eee Potential Prompt: trademark of Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved. • © Scholastic Entertainment Inc. WORDGIRL is a registered © 2013 WGBH Educational Foundation. All rights reserved. • ARTHUR: Service. All rights reserved. mark of the Public Broadcasting The PBS KIDS logo is a registered Inc. • © Highlights for Children, Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. TM & © 2013 LeapFrog The PBS KIDS Writers Contest is produced by PBS and is based on the Reading Rainbow® Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, a concept developed by WNED. National prizing and promotional considerations provided by LeapFrog® with additional promotional support All stories start with an idea of the characters, places or events that will be in from Highlights for Children®. the story. You can draw/write any idea you have in this space and then we’ll talk about how it might become a story. Brainstorming is a way to come up with new and different ideas. Use this Let the story writing begin! activity booklet to write or draw whatever comes to your mind. You’ll end up with a Activity 2: Brainstorming GREAT STORY! Brainstorming Activity Objective: Where the best stories begin. Story Structure All stories have a beginning, middle and an end. Even short stories are complex, and require students to work on a number Write down or draw how you want the story to start, what happens during the story, and how will it end. Beginning End of elements: characters, plot/story structure, climax/resolution, and setting. Middle The PBS KIDS Writers Contest is produced by PBS and is based on the Reading Rainbow® Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, a concept developed by WNED. National prizing and promotional considerations provided by LeapFrog® with This worksheet is intended to help your students expand upon theiradditional promotional support fromstory Highlights for Children®. idea(s) to develop a strong story. The PBS KIDS logo is a registered mark of the Public Broadcasting Service. All rights reserved. • ARTHUR: © 2013 WGBH Educational Foundation. All rights reserved. • “Martha” and all characters and underlying materials (including artwork) from the “Martha” books • “Martha” and all characters underlying materials (including artwork) from • ARTHUR: © 2013 WGBH Educational Foundation. All rights reserved. Service. All rights reserved. mark of the Public Broadcasting The PBS KIDS logo is a registered trademarks of and copyrights WGBH. • Cat in the Hat © & TM DSE. Wild Company/9 Story Entertainment trademarks of and copyrights Susan Meddaugh used under license. All other characters underlying materials are Kratts is a Kratt Brothers are Inc. • © Highlights for Children, Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. • TM & © LeapFrog trademark of Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved. Inc. • ©Scholastic Entertainment WORDGIRL is a registered © 2013 WK3 Productions production. Story running long? Grab another sheet of paper! The PBS KIDS Writers Contest is produced by PBS and is based on the Reading Rainbow® Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, a concept developed by WNED. For more imformation and how to enter visit: pbskids.org/read National prizing and promotional considerations provided by LeapFrog® with additional promotional support from Highlights for Children®. The KMOS Writers Contest is produced by KMOS, the University of Central Missouri's Public Broadcasting Station and is based on the Reading Rainbow® Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, a concept developed by WNED. Story Revision Checklist Read your story out loud. Activity 3: Revising Then ask yourself each of these questions. If the answer is yes, check it off on the checklist! Does my story have a beginning, middle, and end? My story is organized! Does my story answer my reader’s questions My story is developed! about what happened? Activity Objective: Does my story include enough information? My story is detailed! Does my story use clear and specific words? StoryMy story Revision has good vocabulary! Do my sentences make sense when I read My story has good them out loud? Checklistsentence structure! This worksheet is intended to help your students develop self-criticism skills Did I check my story for correct spelling, My story is proofread! punctuation, and capitalization? Read your story out loud. Then ask yourself each of these questions. so that they can refine and improve their stories. There are two versions of this If the answer is yes, check it off on the checklist! worksheet, one with the questions and answers filled out and one with blank questions and answers for you to fill out based on the reading and writing skills underlying materials are trademarks of and copyrights of WGBH. • TM & © 2013 LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. • © Highlights for Children, Inc. Children, for Highlights © • reserved. rights All Inc. Enterprises, LeapFrog 2013 © & TM • WGBH. of copyrights and of trademarks are materials underlying and characters other All license. under used and Meddaugh Susan The PBS KIDS Writers Contest is produced by PBS and is based on the Reading Rainbow® Young Writers of copyrights and of trademarks are books “Martha” the from artwork) (including materials underlying and characters all and “Martha” reserved. rights All Foundation. Educational WGBH 2013 © • reserved. rights All Service. Broadcasting Public the of mark registered a is logo KIDS PBS The and Illustrators Contest, a concept developed by WNED. National prizing and promotional considerations of your students. provided by LeapFrog® with additional promotional support from Highlights for Children®. Potential Prompt: The PBS KIDS Writers Contest is produced by PBS and is based on the Reading Rainbow® Young Writers How are you feeling about your stories? Do they hold your interest? One of the and Illustrators Contest, a concept developed by WNED. National prizing and promotional considerations provided by LeapFrog® with additional promotional support from Highlights for Children®. hardest thing to do as a writer is to review and revise your stories. This is done by The PBS KIDS logo is a registered mark of the Public Broadcasting Service. All rights reserved. • Wild Kratts is a Kratt Brothers Company/9 Story Entertainment production. © 2013 WK3 Productions Inc. “critiquing” your story, which means evaluating all of the parts of your story to see if TM & © 2013 LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. • © Highlights for Children, Inc. they are what you want. As you read through your stories, ask yourself the questions on the worksheet. If you don’t think you can check off the boxes, think about how you can change, or revise, your story so that you can check off each of the boxes. Activity 4: Illustrations Draw This! Draw a picture that illustrates the word “School” in the box below. Then, choose seven more words to write and illustrate in the remaining boxes. After you’re done, explain to a classmate, teacher or parent what you drew and why. (Write a word here.) Activity Objective: Happy School This worksheet is intended to help your students practice making thoughtful, (Draw a picture here.)(Draw a picture here.) engaging illustrations for their stories. On the worksheet are some examples of words that you can write into the boxes if you would like to provide the students with the words. The PBS KIDS logo is a registered mark of the Public Broadcasting Service. All rights reserved. • Cat in the Hat © & TM DSE. • © Scholastic Entertainment Inc. WORDGIRL is a registered • Cat in the Hat © & TM DSE. Scholastic Entertainment Inc. WORDGIRL is a registered Service. All rights reserved. mark of the Public Broadcasting The PBS KIDS logo is a registered Inc. • © Highlights for Children, Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved. • TM & © 2013 LeapFrog trademark of Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved. Sample words: You can also allow your students to pick words or phrases from their own stories (Use these or make up your own) Bedtime Reading Birthday Sad Family School Playground Summer and have them draw corresponding images. The PBS KIDS Writers Contest is produced by PBS and is based on the Reading Rainbow® Young Writers and Illustrators Contest, a concept developed by WNED. National prizing and promotional considerations provided by LeapFrog® with additional promotional support from Highlights for Children®. Potential Prompt: Lots of books have both pictures and words. The pictures are important because they can show things that aren’t in the words of the story, and they can add funny, happy, sad or scary feelings to the story. (You can show examples of books with illustrations and talk about elements and feelings). In this work- sheet you will draw an illustration of the word or words in each box. When you do this, try to show something about the word that helps tell more. For example, for the word “school” is it a red school? Is it a school in winter? You can use a picture to tell more about the people, places and events in your story. Supplementary Worksheet: Caption Writing Write This! Write a caption for the picture below. Then either draw your own or cut and paste pictures into the empty boxes. Then write a caption for each picture. Activity Objective: This supplementary worksheet is designed to help children think about the It’s a happy, sunny day! (Write your own caption here.) relationship of images and illustrations to text, or captions.