Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Ways to End Our Stories

As we continue our revision process, my students worked on their endings. We talked about how stories about our lives need to have all the lose ends tied up nice and neat so that the reader has the complete story from beginning, middle, and end.

A few things we put on our chart for ending
  • our stories tie up all the lose ends.
  • can end the same way it begans (repeated line or phrase)
  • don't use "the end"
  • don't end in "happily ever after" that is reserved for fairy tales
  • reflect the mood of the author and what they were thinking
We looked at my writing and that of our mentor text.  Then I had students meet with their writing partners to discuss what type ending would work for their piece and then revise three different versions of an ending.  I have found that allowing students a time to play with words and work on endings in their notebooks  helps them see things from a different perspective and really use the notebook as a place to revise before putting it on draft paper.

Happy Revising!!!

No comments:

Post a Comment