Using literature & wordless books to jump into writing

Here is a website listing wordless books. Here are titles of books and ideas to go with them. Here are three other ideas about how to use literature to jump start writing by Geri Hagler

Using wordless book as a jump into writing

http://www.acpl.lib.in.us/children/wordless.html

A Boy, A Dog and a Frog     by Mercer Mayer

Tuesday                                 by David Wiesner

April Fools                             Fernando Krahn

Using literature as a jump into writing

·         After reading The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs, discuss other fairy tales that have a clear protagonist and antagonist; choose a different fairy tale to write in the point of view of the antagonist.  Hansel and Gretel

·         After reading Sam, Bangs and Moonshine, have the kids write about a time they lied and what effect that caused (cause and effect; consequences)

·         After reading Oh, the Thinks You can Think! have them write about all the things they think about, serious, sad, angry, happy, scary, confusing things or things they just want to know about

·         Discuss the elements of fairy tales and what we expect to read from traditional fairy tales, read The Paper Bag Princess, Sleeping Ugly, or The King’s Equal. Discuss how these stories were not traditional. Have them write their own fairy tale focusing on setting, antagonist, protagonist, problem, solution and moral.

·         After reading, Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing, have students choose A-Z animals, mammals, reptiles, birds, fish or forest animals, ocean animals or just 10 animals (not already mentioned) to write their own reasons animals should not wear clothing

·         After reading The Stupids Stories, discuss the element of irony that make these stories funny.  Have them write actions that would be ironic.

·         After reading, The Teacher From the Black Lagoon, have the students describe their own ideas of what makes a teacher a monster, what makes a teacher bad or good

·         Read Donovan’s Word Jar, and have the students create a class collection of great words

·         Read The Dot &the Line: a romance in lower mathematics. Have the students write a love story or poem between geometric shapes or numbers, with a focus on puns, homophone play on words and meanings

·         Read Ruth Heller’s books on parts of speech (in poetry form)  and have them write and illustrate their own parts of speech book

Other writing ideas:

Vote-a-story: choose a wordless book, or fairy tale to rewrite from a different point of view and build the story by having your class vote on each aspect from the title, beginning, setting, characters, plot, and end.  Ask for ideas for each aspect, writing down about five ideas, then have the students put their heads down so no one can see, and have them vote on which idea to choose. I really like this activity, but it takes time. Assign a student to write down the final choices.  Once the story is done, I take the voted choices and divide the story into as many parts/pages as I  have students. I give each student a line to be written on a blank sheet and have them illustrate their line.

Picture story:  Either you or the students cut out pictures from magazines.  1) Give each student a picture to write about, or 2) Place a different picture with a sheet of lined paper on each desk and have student rotate every one minute to a different picture.  Students write about the picture, but must add on to what the person before them wrote until everyone has gone around to every picture.  Then we pass the picture and the stories around to read.

Comic strip: Cut out a comic strip from the newspaper and white out the words, make copies for each person, or make an over head and have the students write their own caption for that cartoon