Story Writing
~ Diana Triplett

When I taught 1st grade, I had students fold a 12" X 18" sheet of paper into thirds and draw the beginning, middle and end of a story in the three boxes. Then they used the pictures to help them write the story. The results were delightful and creative stories. Using this organizer, even my severely delayed kids could produce 3 logical connected sentences that sounded like a story. However, this was only one lesson of many mini-lessons experienced in the context of writing workshop, and I never led them to believe that this was the only way to write a story. It was simply a tool. These kids were used to writing without prompts or limits, and had extensive exposure to studies of genre and various elements of writing.