Narrative is the way we share our lives with the world. Whether you are a nerdy future-Bill Gates, a quiet wallflower, or a star athlete (or a mix of all 3!), your connection to the world and other people is through story.
Today we begin our work with narrative. Specifically, we are focusing on genres that fall into this kind of writing: realistic fiction (for 8th grade) and fantasy (for 7th grade). We have some lofty goals, but I am positive we will reach them! For 7th grade, our goal is to write a great fantasy story. For 8th, great realistic fiction.
A foundation we are working to lay here in Room 220 is the ability to view the world with the eyes of a writer.
For some students, this is a very new way to see the events, conversations, decisions, sights, smells and perspectives that usually just pass them by. For others, it's an opportunity to live the way they always have: Collecting tidbits here and there in writer's notebooks that might later bloom into a story that hits a reader right in the heart.
To begin our life as writers, we are collecting ideas in our writers' notebooks. We've looked to Suzanne Collins' inspiration for Hunger Games and John Green's inspiration for The Fault in Our Stars to think about:
Students use this strategy to ground their story ideas with real life, and drift sometimes into the "what ifs" that imagination can take us to.
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