Good Writers in Full Bloom

Well, we did it! We survived the Mississippi Writing Test on Wednesday. Although it took us more than three hours to complete the assessment, we had nothing to fear. Why? Because we have prepared, of course! We grew from budding writers to writers in full bloom! Ready for Spring!

One of the writing projects we completed was a narrative assignment. Our writing prompt asked us to write about a day that we enjoyed doing something outdoors. We were to use strong verbs and descriptive language to help the reader see what we wrote about.

Mrs. Johnson introduced the activity by connecting a previous lesson on quotation marks. We discuss careers that use quotation marks, or dialogue, in their lives. One of the careers we discussed was script writers and producers for television shows or movies. When a person writes a script for a movie or television show, there must be enough specific and vivid language so that the actors will know exactly what they are supposed to do. It is also important so that set designers and costume designers will know exactly what their creations should look like. Mrs. Johnson told us that movie and television producers begin with storyboards. A storyboard is much like a comic strip. There is a picture of the scene with a description underneath. So, we thought about four main things that happened during our day outside, and we drew those four things. Our drawings had to have the set and costumes needed for our "movie." We also wrote a caption under each scene to tell us what is happening in the picture. This activity served as our brainstorming session.

Once our storyboards were ready, allowing us to visualize what we were writing about, it was time for prewriting. To organize our thoughts, topics, and details, we used a Four Square graphic organizer. We used this organizer to add vivid details and topic sentences for each scene. We also came up with an introductory sentence for our whole story. The topic sentence of narrative writing consists of who, what, when, where, and why.

Once our thoughts were organized, we put our ideas into paragraph form using the best sentence structure and grammar possible.

Mrs. Johnson met with us one on one to edit and discuss revisions. When our first and second drafts were discussed and corrected, we completed our final draft. You should be able to read our writings and visualize what we drew on our storyboards.

Our Storyboard Brainstorming "Bloomed" into Narrative Writing! See, we told you that we were writers in full bloom!

Just take a look!

We went from movie producers and script writers...

...to narrative writers!

Now that will put a little "Spring" in your step!