|Stories|

When I was younger, I always loved to tell stories. One story in particular that stands out to me was a narrative piece I did in the sixth grade. For this piece, we were tasked with writing a story from the perspective of someone we admired. At this time, I was becoming really interested in the 1950s-1960s Civil Rights Movement. One person who I was specifically interested in was Rosa Parks. So, as the story goes, I decided to write in her perspective for my assignment. The beginning of the piece began with a description of Rosa Parks. The middle consisted of the various accomplishments of Rosa Parks. And (this was unique for a sixth grader) the end revealed that all of the information presented was describing Rosa Parks. It would take me hours and an allergy attack to find my sixth grade notebook in our storage room, but I believe the ending went something like this: “I am Rosa Parks, and this was my story.” As a sixth grader I was so proud of my work. However, my teacher’s feedback described my work as creative, but not in the correct order of events that we were learning about in class. Disappointed, I began to slowly stop writing stories, or narrative pieces, for fear that my creativity would be “wrong,” but I still loved storytelling.

As an educator, I want to make sure that my students’ know that there is no inherent right or wrong way to tell a story, they should be encouraged to be unique, adventurous, and creative. However, every student deserves a spark and guidance, which is where mentor texts and writing strategies come in to make sure students are getting the most out of their narrative writing experience!

Using I Talk Like a River to Inspire Descriptive Language and Beginnings

I Talk Like a River, written by Jordan Scott and Illustrated by Sydney Smith, is a wonderful mentor text to use with students. Especially when discussing beginnings and show, don’t tell, writing strategies. The first three pages of the story (figure 1.1) give a compelling hook to the setting of this story, which is through the lens of the main character. With such rich descriptive language, readers are automatically drawn into the story. I think a great way to implement this mentor text in teaching students to write beginnings is to use a show, don’t tell writing approach. One way to do this is to make a senses chart. In my writer’s notebook, I give a sample of a senses chart as a way to formulate my narrative about an adventure with my pony, Snowflake, as a young girl (figure 1.2).

How I would structure this activity would be to have students think of a story they would like to tell their friends, family, classmates, teachers, etc. We would read through I Talk Like a River, asking students to pay particular attention to details described by the author (i.e., what did the boy possibly smell? Hear? etc.) I would then provide students with a senses chart to fill out with the purpose of describing the settings or events in the story they want to tell through their senses, being inspired by how the author appealed to the senses in the mentor text. To begin to teach strategies on how to begin a story, I would use I Talk Like a River. Since this is intended to start at the root of beginning narrative writing instruction, I think it would be appropriate to use the first sentence of I Talk Like a River as a model for students: “I wake up with the sounds of _______…” (or give students the option of “I walked up to the ______ with the sounds of ______.)

figure 1.1

Sometimes sparking a story is all about a beginning, and I Talk Like a River is a great way to model strong beginnings and descriptive language.

figure 1.2

Using Drawn Together to Find the Message Behind Illustrations and Inspiration

Drawn together, written by Minh Lê and illustrated by Dan Santat, is a story that really touched my heart. My Papaw, who passed away on July 4, 2020, and I’s relationship was so similar to the relationship displayed in this text. While these two characters had drawing as a common love, my Papaw and I had music. If I am being honest, this was probably this biggest thing we had in common, along with the love we had for our family. Nonetheless, this story inspired me to write a narrative piece about my Papaw. While Drawn Together did not have many words, it had so much room for interpretation. One activity I would recommend with this story is creating possible endings based on illustrations, as highlighted in the “Your Turn” lessons in Mentor Texts, Chapter 5. The image from Drawn Together is from the last pages of the story (figure 1.3).

figure 1.3

A few of the possible endings could be:

• When mom came to pick me up, I was so thrilled to get home and practice drawing!

• Mom picked me up later that day, but the only thing on my mind was when I would be able to come draw with Grandpa again.

• It has been a beautiful day with Grandpa, and I can’t wait to impress him with my new skills drawing with his ink pen. I wonder what he will draw with my pink marker?

• As grandpa waved goodbye while we drove away, I saw the pictures in the sky and remembered, we will always have our drawings.

There are so many possibilities, and what a way to get our students’ creative thoughts rolling!

As I have mentioned on my blog before, I absolutely love Mentor Texts by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli for its inspiration behind sparking our students’ creativity. One of the ideas in Chapter 5 was having a list of sentence types to choose from when beginning a story. While I definitely plan to use this strategy in my classroom, I have to admit, I used it in reverse. I struggled to end my piece on Papaw, so I used this strategy for an ending, and it worked! Me mentioning this is to show that we should strive to be as creative as we hope our students to be, and that comes with making strategies work for the writer! Check out figures 1.4 to see a list of sentence structures I brainstormed to end my piece about my Papaw.

figure 1.4

Ending sentence created for Papaw narrative, still a work in progress. Went with short, choppy sentence structure!

I am dedicating this Blog Post to my Papaw- thank you for the music and stories! I can't wait to pass them along.

To be quite frank, I love storytelling because of the laughter, tears, and range of other emotions I see in those I am speaking these stories to. Writing is a way to get my stories down so that they can be passed down to those I love, and those they love, and so on. I hope to get my students telling stories in a way that makes them understand that they are such magnificent writers-- I already believe this, and I haven’t even met them yet! However, the trick will be getting them to realize how magnificent they are as writers. With mentor texts and strategies to get students writing structured, detailed narratives, I am confident I will have a classroom filled with strong, passionate narrative writers one day.

References

Dorfman, L. R., Cappelli, R., & Hoyt, L. (2017). Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children's Literature, K-6. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse.

Lê Minh, & Santat, D. (2018). Drawn Together. Disney-Hyperion.

Scott, J., & Smith, S. (2020). I Talk Like a River. Neal Porter Books.