by Linda Galloway
After students can write at least simple sentences in the past tense, this is a good activity to practice past tense, questions, and purpose.
It also helps students interact, whether it is in person or on-line.
Students are instructed to write between 4 and10 sentences about an experience they have had that might surprise others in the class. It could be a simple, funny, scary, surprising, educational, or emotional story. Childhood stories are especially effective here. Students should know that the stories will be shared with the class. You can also put one in as long as your writing sample is not so much better than the students that they will simply guess from the high vocabulary level, for instance.
Once they turn in the stories, you edit them to adjust too-obvious clues and to fix any grammar problems. Sometimes this involves several changes, so I usually show it to the specific writer to ensure that it is accurate or to help them expand with more details (See Writing Tips # 1 and
# 2).
When all stories are in and edited (or even before if some students are confused about what to write), one story is read each class. Make sure the story you have selected is from a student who is present that day. Students ask questions to narrow the possibilities. The writer should answer along with all of the other students but should not reveal too much. You can either answer them or have all students respond if this could be true for them (for example, ‘How many of you have dogs?’ ‘How many of you have been in a hospital?’) The responses should be available to all students. Eventually, the possibilities will be only a few, and students can then guess, even if they do not know the other students very well. I have always started out by reading the stories aloud and then sharing them on the white board so that students can read them, but that depends on the listening skills of students. After the student is correctly guessed, comments about good writing traits can be pointed out (like nice use of adjectives or adverbs – even if you added them).
This activity helps students understand the importance of details for more interesting writing and how thinking of the audience can be essential.