Welcome to Week 4 Meeting Tale Notes
The workshop today focused on building up a suspenseful meeting tale toolkit and co-constructing the build up to our class story. We discussed using sounds rather than seeing the visiting character.
Specifically, the students:
– created a sounds list for their magpie journals so they could use sounds in their stories. This helps with showing rather than telling.
– added to their bank of interesting sentence openers and briefly discussed fronted adverbials
– innovated sentences that used the ‘power of three’
– added further details to the ‘Meeting Tale’ toolbox (Magpie Journals pg 23 & 24)
– co-constructed some of the build-up for our class story
Class-constructed Meeting Tale
The brief opening:
Granny and the Clown
It was past midnight, one misty morning, when Granny thought she saw a strange looking clown.
Build up:
It was juggling banana in the back corner of grannies yard. At first, she noticed moving shadows. Then she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Finally, she heard strange laughing.
Granny opened her bedroom curtains slightly and peeked out. She saw a glimpse of a distorted red nose. On top of its head, big messy hair grew and a raggedy hat sat. She could see a scar on its pale haunted familiar face.
Note: each week the creating process is quick paced. Sometimes, we settle for something not quite right and look to come back to it in the following lesson.
Home Tasks
- Create the build up for their own story. Use the boxing up as a guide, use the tools in the magpie journals to help – eg. sounds list, sentence openers, tool box tips. Remember the point of the ‘Build up’ – identify something suspicious, using senses to describe visitor with the main character responding with caution, fear and uncertainty.
- Add to their own Magpie journal any ‘words or phrases’ they collect. (pg. 29)
Other Resources
- Video of onomatopoeia sounds
- Describing Sounds – big list of sounds
- On Show don’t Tell
