How Can I Bring My Stories to Life?

Remind learners of all the ways they have been stretching their storytelling muscles. Some ways that we can become better storytellers is by being inspired by other storytellers, using everyday moments as inspiration, using drawings, and adding dialogue.

Arrange learners in pairs to do a turn and talk. Invite learners to think of someone who is a really good storyteller in their life. They may utilize this frame:

Gather input from learners. As learners share, scribe their ideas on an anchor chart. You may choose to write “A good storyteller… ” as a title. As the conversation progresses, widen your scope by asking your learners about good storytelling in general. What have we learned so far about what makes a good story? You will return once more to this question at the end of the lesson.

Share with learners that the text you are about to read is called Ten Ways to Hear Snow where the author, Cathy Camper, utilizes figurative language as she tells the story of a young girl going to visit her grandmother. Briefly compare literal language and figurative language by comparing these two sentences. “I use the marker to write” is an example of literal language. I am only describing what I can directly see. “Whooosh! The marker dances across the page” is an example of figurative language. I am using a sound at the beginning to bring my writing to life.

Link some previous thoughts about compelling storytelling to what Cathy Camper does to bring her stories to life.

Have learners come up with some examples of onomatopoeia and scribe them on a whiteboard or butcher paper. Tell learners that there will be several examples of onomatopoeia in our mentor text. Engage learners by asking them to participate in finding onomatopoeia with a whole body response, for example, twinkling your fingers every time you hear onomatopoeia.