Procedures Minilesson

“All right, all write.”

This lesson will engage students through the listening to and, writing of a story. The teacher will read a short passage from a story. The student assignment will be to finish the story beginning from where the reading stops. The students, relying on past instruction and prior knowledge about sentence structure, spelling, proper punctuation, and creative composition, will write a minimum of one page telling their version of what happens next. This assignment does not require the students to express themselves in vivid detail as it is just an exercise to let their imaginations expand in the form of writing and, to see what kind of skills they possess when it comes to creative writing.

Dialogue before the writing begins between the teacher and the students can be created by scripted questions the teacher can ask such as: “What do you think are the qualities of a short story that make it “good”?” Some boys may give answers like “adventure, and action,” while some girls may consider those qualities to be closer linked to “romance.” Another question the teacher can ask is “What do you think are the characteristics of a short story that make it “bad”?” While both the boys and girls may give answers that oppositely reflect their answers as to why they like short stories, they may also make observations about it being “too long,” “too unbelievable,” or perhaps just “uninteresting.”

The teacher can then move on to some of the important building blocks of short story composition. Questions like, “What is plot? What is theme? What is characterization? What is setting?” can all be used to further the students understanding of it takes to write a short story.

Discussion and instruction for this lesson plan will take thirty-five minutes. Students will be allowed twenty-five minutes to write their story conclusion, and if they do not finish in class, they are to take the assignment home, finish it there, and bring it back to the next class meeting. Students should be prepared to share their stories with the class during the first thirty minutes of the next class meeting after which they will be collected and graded based on sentence structure, correct spelling and proper punctuation.

Materials Needed:

A handout of the story that is to be read aloud in class.

National Standards

3….Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

Competency Goals

1.01 Narrate a fictional or autobiographical account which:

• Tells a story or establishes the significance of an event or events
• Uses a range of appropriate strategies (e.g., dialogue, suspense, movement, gestures, expressions).

6.01 Demonstrate an understanding of conventional written and spoken expression by:

• Using a variety of sentence types correctly, punctuating them properly, and avoiding fragments and run-ons.
• Using appropriate subject-verb agreement and verb tense that are appropriate for the meaning of the sentence
• Demonstrating the different roles of the parts of speech in sentence construction
• Using pronouns correctly, including clear antecedents and correct case
• Using phrases and clauses correctly (e.g., prepositional phrases, appositives, dependent and independent clauses).
• Determining the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary words by using context clues, a dictionary, a glossary, a thesaurus, and / or structural analysis (roots, prefixes, suffixes) of words
• Extending vocabulary knowledge by learning and using new words
• Developing an awareness of language conventions and usage during oral presentations

What Will Happen Next?

Vic Wilcox

It was a blustery day that greeted Bobby and Liz as they boarded the charter flight from Sacramento, California to Portland, Oregon. If they had known how the ill winds that were blowing would change their lives, they might not have gotten on that plane.

Bobby and Liz had never met, in fact, sitting next to one another in that single engine Cessna brought about the first time they had ever laid eyes on each other. So how did they come to be in the same four-seater plane? They were both being flown to Portland for a job interview with a large pharmaceutical company, each fully aware of the reason the other was in the plane.

By the time the plane had reached the Cascade Mountain Range in Oregon, the weather had become more threatening. The pilot told Bobby and Liz to make sure they were strapped in to their seats securely because he thought it would things would get worse before they got better. He was right. As the thunder rolled around the little plane, lightening was flashing. The pilot decided he had had enough and was going to turn around and go back to an airfield they had flown over about thirty minutes ago. As he was turning the plane there was a brilliant flash of light followed by a deafening clap of thunder. The plane had been struck by lightening and was dropping like a rock.

The pilot some how managed to gain some attitude control as the aircraft hurried for a densely forested area of the mountains. With no way to stop the rapid descent of the plane he guided it into the least treacherous section of the mountain range he could, knowing that a crash landing was inevitable.

As the plane got nearer to the ground, the tallest trees started tearing at the hulk. Bobby and Liz were both scared out of their wits. They were sure this would be the end for them. Glass started shattering as the metal framing began to lose its integrity. Then without notice, the plane came to a stop. It was resting at the end of a fresh made scar in the earth beneath a canopy of broken trees.

When Liz woke up she looked around to see that she was still strapped in her seat next to Bobby. He was unconscious, but still breathing. She looked toward the front of the plane and saw the pilot slumped over the wheel. She could not tell if he was a live or dead, all she knew was that he was not moving. In her memory she recalled the pilot saying as they turned around they were thirty minutes from a landing strip, but she was clueless as to the direction it was in from their current location or how far. The storm was still echoing through the mountains as the rain beat down upon the wreckage. She was scared.