Each year Plateau School has for six weeks, one hour per week, an Enrichment period.
The sessions stretch from knitting, building robots, web pages, photography, painting, bush walks, designing, reading maps and whatever is different from the real school periods. Volunteers(mostly parents) show or help children to do things they have never tried before. Each child had to decide which session they would attend.
The sessions are the last hour of the day, on Mondays this year.
I volunteered to help them to write their own stories.
Eleven children are attending my sessions. Two boys and nine girls. They are in year four and five.
We started two weeks ago.
The first period was just an introduction to what they could expect.
I want them to write at least three stories. Then I’m going to help them to put it in a book with a cover, front page, content and maybe an introduction.
- We started off by brainstorming the ideas what they are going to write about
- Then the first sentence or paragraph to hook the reader into the story.
- Next is the body or what happened.
- Last paragraph, the ending where the story is rounded off.
The second period was the past week. I explained to them that writing a story is like making a sandwich. They had to tell me what they would need for the sandwich.
The top slice is the sentence in which they explain who is in the story and also to hook the reader in by just giving away a little bit of the story
The yummy middle part is where all the deliciousness lies. All the action of the story and then the bottom slice is where the main character wins the battle or is saved.
I am going to edit the stories just a little bit so that the pieces make sense. I received my first stories and am astounded by how good they are. I’m also going to put some stories on my blog to show how good they are.
At the end of the six weeks, I want to publish a book with all their stories in it. It could be a good Christmas present at the end of the year.