#4237. Writing Roulette for genre study

Reading/Writing, level: Middle
Posted Fri Oct 31 13:10:36 PDT 2008 by Sara Barton (Sara Barton).
Materials Required: paper, pens, decorations or nice paper to publish work
Activity Time: 50-70 min
Concepts Taught: writing

This is a great lesson on holidays where your students have a hard time focusing. I did this for Halloween (which fell on a Friday!).

Every student will contribute so it is an easy way of having 100 students' work on your wall without having to have that many items.

1. ORGANIZATION: Have students sit in rows of 5-7. Try to make all groups as even as possible. Each student has a piece of paper (Writers or Alpha writers are also very good for this)
2. PREWRITING: Class brainstorms story elements for a certain genre. For Halloween, we did a scary story so we brainstormed what were common elements in the horror genre. You could do this with any genre writing.
3. DRAFTING: instruct students to write, beginning their story. After 2 or so minutes writing, instruct them to pass to the next person. Student reads their new story and begins to add. Students rotate for 5-7 rotations across their specific row. As students write, remind them to add imagery and dialogue. Instruct them that the end will be near and they will need to write a climax to the story. I like to finish on the same child who the story began with. During Halloween, I played scary music to set the mood.
4. CONFERENCING: When finished, have groups share writing and decide which is the best story that will get published. I usually have them raise their hands if they think they have the top stories this way the groups do not waste time reading stories that do not work.
5. EDITING: Groups edit either by typing it up or rewriting. I encourage students to use thematically appropriate borders and font.
6. PUBLISHING: Students post decorated works outside. For Halloween, I put up fake spider webs and then we post the stories on laminated Halloween scrap paper.