writing wczesnoszkolna11

Story writing

Books are so versatile that they can provide us wiłh fantasy, humour, adventure, Information and morę. We should give children the opporiunity to try out as many of these different strands of literaturę as possible, both in reading and in writing. Story-writing in all its forms, however, is the content most often associated with book*making in the classroom. It is one of the most difficult writing tasks to set young children, although a successful story book brings enormous pleasure to the writer - and indeed to the reader. It is exciting to be able to take the reader off to another land, another time, perhaps, and to build pictures in his/her imagination.

To help children from early juniors onwards to tackle story-writing with success, we provide a guide which takes the writer from the first idea through to publication.

STEPS IN STORY-WRITING

1.    Story-planning. Children should be encouraged to develop the habit of planning their stories before they begin to write. They should use it as a guide, not as an immutable structure - stories can take off in unexpected directions as one writes! Use an A4 sheet doubled to give four A5 pages, big enough for notes, too smali for the story in its finished form.

Page 1. Ask the question, ‘Who is the story for?' (i.e. audience - is it for infants, my friends, Mum and Dad?) Decide on a working tittó~and the malrreharacrersT

Page 2. Synopsis of the story. This technique gives practice in the skills of note-making. Sometimes children are tempted to try and write the whole story at this stage* Encourage them to

keep it to a skełetafoutliner:---. - . ^--:--

Page 3. Thtnk about how you want the story to end. This helps the writer to look ahead, to do his/ her problem-solving in advance. It also encourages slow writers to know that an end is in sight' Page 4. Leave blank for notes and questions which may arise from the editorial conference. or for deviations as the story progresses.

2.    First Draft. The children should rough out the story, not worrying too much about either handwriting or spelling. The golden rule is that they must be able to read the draft. Use scrap paper for this stage.

3.    Editorial Conference. Try to encourage the children to form an 'editorial board' (with the teacher as facilitator until they get into the swing of things). Working from the first draft, ask one child to give the generał outline of his story, .and then choose a page or a chaptęr to read aloud. The others should think about what they have heard and ask questions of the writer e.g. ‘Why did the bank robber need the money?', 'How did the children get to the moon?' or better still, 'How did they get home again?' Encourage the children to look for weaknesses and inconsistencies. They may find this difficult at first, but their skills will improve as time goes on. It is important that the group learns to offer positive criticism - and children can be very generous in this respect. Story-planning tends to become much tighter after working in this kind of way.

4.    Re-drafting. Whenthe writer is satisfied with both the plan and the first draft and has thought

about the questions caised by the editorial board. ahe should then discuss details of grammar and spelling with the taacher. This stage should be on a one-to-one basis, if possible. This is where the teaching is done.    .

5.    Finał Draft. This is the easy bit. all downhill from now on. Each child should feel responsible for making his finał draft as..good as possible: correct spelling and punctuation - and it should be legible. This may indeed be the finał stage for some of the books i.e. they are ready to go ‘public’. If this is the case. the children will want to illustrate their books.

6.    Typed-up/word-processed script. Some of the books.can be put on the word processor or be typed up. This makes a professional job of the children's work and at least one book by each child should be done in this way every session. The manuscript should be proof-read by the author.

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