Imaginative Narratives

I've had so much fun in 3rd grade launching a new writing unit on imaginative narratives. While the stories are imaginative, I wanted them to be realistic. I may have them write another story in the genre, but as a fantasy, perhaps as a revision unit...more thoughts on that later.

Before we started, they read and talked a lot about the genre in reading workshop. We began our work in writing workshop with shared writing. I used a story map to help get them thinking about a plausible story line between two main characters in a realistic setting, with a problem and solution. They helped me brainstorm our class story on chart paper on the first day. Then,we moved into the Writer's Notebooks where they were to begging brainstorming their own stories by applying what we did together as a whole group. Below you can see the beginning stages of our story taking shape.

The next day we moved onto characters.

Come back to see what we did as a whole group and what a student did in her notebook 😀