I Promise I'll Try

Just last week a colleague of mine shared an activity she had done with her class to help solidify their knowledge of plot, conflict, setting and point of view.  She gave me a quick run-through of the activity and suggested I give it a try.

I tried to picture how that would go with my 2nd period class and, I'm a bit ashamed to say, I didn't see it going well.  My inclusion class during that time has a group of kids that struggle with written language, so when I tried to visualize the lesson I could only see chaos.

Tracey assured me, "No, really, it's going to be great!  Look at some of what they wrote, it's great stuff!"

I decided to leave my comfort zone behind and give it a try.  The kids worked together in groups of 4 to write a story in the round.  They used their writing to show not only their own creativity, but also their knowledge of all those story elements we'd been talking about in class.

Yeah, they did look a little scared in the beginning.  So I made sure to tell them there was only one rule they had to follow.  They had to be willing to try.

Try they did and succeed they did.  Today we shared a few stories before the lesson of the day.  We'll share some more tomorrow because there's nothing better than hearing a student read something he or she is proud of.