Welcome to HIT—How I Teach….In this episode, I teachers, parents, and teaching parents how to utilize a model story to teach Twice Told Tales (TTT) short story writing. A Twice Told Tales short story is one in which students are given a model of a popular story and instructed in how to write another tale that has a similar plot and ending but has a different setting, different characters, different obstacles, and more. Twice Told Tales are fun to teach and fun to write!
Here is what I cover in this HIT about the Elves and the Shoemaker TTT for middle school students:
- How to differentiate a TTT story so that you can span a number of writing levels
- How to choose model stories for your TTT assignments (based on number of characters, difficulty of plot, and length of story)
- Teaching students three ways to know when a scene should change (using the model story to demonstrate these)
- How to offer two different outlining tools for both students who are leery of story writing and those who love story writing
- The importance of not asking too many new skills of students all at one time (and some things to look for in any program you use to avoid this)
- Teaching story writing without dialogue at younger grades using indirect quotes instead of full dialogue quotes
- Much more! 😊
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 samples—and the model for students to twice-tell from.
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, Christmas Friends III, a month-long downloadable book available at LAL store AND my stand-alone product, Christmas — Twice Told Tale–The Elves and the Shoemaker (Level III), at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
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
