Newsletter: Memory Stories in Writing Workshop

This week we are continuing our genre study of memory stories in Writing Workshop. The kids began this work by developing strategies to help them decide what they might write about each day.

With a handful of strategies in place, the kids began filling up their notebooks with tiny moments. We've been calling these "seed stories." These are the sorts of moments that may have happened in just a few minutes but can be stretched down the page in such a way that allows the reader to feel as though they are in the moment with us. The opposite of this would be a "watermelon story" in which the writer talks about an entire day at the Fair or a weekend with Grandma and Grandpa. Watermelon stories tend to be told as a list of events. They lack the opportunity to invite a reader into a moment of our lives and let them envision it in their heads with greater detail.

My example of a story that is taking a small moment and stretching it out.

The kids go out to give it a try.

Family pets are a favorite topic from which to find small moment stories.

Our goal is to write more and more stories - filling up our notebooks with important moments from our lives. 

As the kids meet with me each day I offer one more piece of advice for their writing before they head off to write. Recently we've been talking about telling our stories step-by-step so we can include the small details that will help the reader imagine it all in their heads.

They are all doing such a great job. Though a handful were a bit slow to start, they are now feeling so confident and inspired to tell about themselves through story. We are growing as writers but we're also growing as a community through the sharing of these pieces. In the coming weeks we'll keep learning new ways to push ourselves and our writing to make sure we're working each day to grow in ways we hadn't considered the day before. There's a lot of energy in our Writing Workshop right now. We can't wait to share these with you in the next couple of weeks!