Welcome to HIT—How I Teach….in this episdoe, I bring you part II of two parts of how to teach story writing for junior high and beyond! For years, I didn’t understand how to help my students write outstanding stories—stories in which they were able to include and elaborate on the goals and obstacles of their characters, show the progressive action (and how to create excitement through it), and make it all happen within the space allotted for the project. Until…my first born son got into story writing as a hobby during high school. He spent many nights writing short stories, novels, and screen plays using the proper story writing techniques that he had learned through story writing books created for novelists.
Fast forward many years, and he and I created many story writing and creative writing books and projects together and had the added blessing of being able to teach them together too!
In this second half of middle school story writing training, I walk through the following elements of story writing and how I teach them in my short story projects (and in this fun animated elephant story from one of my Write for a Month books {Dumbo, Level III}):
- Opening—calmness
- Inciting incident—less calm/beginning action
- Progressive complication—fast/even less calm
- Climax—edge of seat/no calmness
- Resolution—calmness again/solution
I also teach how to teach outlining and including dialogue in a six to ten paragraph short story about an animated elephant!
Of course, just like every lesson in my one-month downloadable books and my one-semester Meaningful Composition books, this one also has the invaluable sample story!
And for your convenience, How I Teach…. is available as a podcast (follow along in your TN sheets for that week) and a YouTube video (with Power Point containing the same as the TN)!
Note: This lesson came from Write for a Month With Dumbo, Level III, a month-long downloadable product!
Find everything you need here!
Weekly broadcast episodes with Teacher’s Notebook downloads (and links to listen or watch!) at the Language Arts Lady blog
Master (continually updated) Teacher’s Notebook downloadable booklet
Free writing books and videos of me teaching your students for you for a couple of weeks!
All of my digital books
How I Teach YouTube Channel
How I Teach Podcast
