The Great Stories are designed to ignite the imagination for the 6-12 year old. Theoretically, on entering our 6-12 class a child is a fluent reader, or near to a fluent reader, so we can get straight into independent research, the child can have lessons on 3 part cards or read the experiment cards ...... wrong.....
Due to a variety of reasons many of us have early readers and writers in our classrooms. We also face the challenge of trying to meet state or national benchmarks.
I've made this collection of story starters for early readers and writers.
I find doing guided or shared writing very beneficial in increasing children's vocabulary, writing ability and reading skills.
Shared writing is where you, the teacher, write a text for students as a model of what a piece of writing looks like. Ideally, you target your finished piece of writing to slightly above the level of the children involved for example if children were using just initial letters to write a story you would model how to write medial and final sounds.
You may find this website helpful. It explains the type of teaching that helps children in early literacy.
These instructional strategies are effective in different ways for different purposes but a good teacher uses a variety :)
- Modelling
- Prompting
- Questioning
- Giving Feedback
- Telling
- Explaining
- Directing
This pack of story starters can be used for the First Great Story. I suggest you model a piece of writing first and then give students the sheet and have them write a story about the given topic.
It includes 15 different story starters or prompts like this one:
You may also be interested in these Great Story Blog Posts:
The Montessori Great Stories 101
