I am needing to find some good reading story starters for my daugher who will be in the 6th grade. Where do I find these? Thanks
I found a rather small book called "From Heart to Page: Journaling Through The Year for Young Writers". It has a whole year's list of journal entries. It is divided so every fifth entry is "free writing". Be warned that many (not all!) of the entries are religious, so if you don't want a Christian curriculum, this would not be a good choice.
Not sure if the grade level is too low but...you could look just to make sure. I found some neat calendars a while back on www.busyteacherscafe.com that were developed by Erika Gomez-Schanne. They have 4 weeks per month and each *week day* has a topic to write about. Examples May day #12 it says: Describe a trip you would like to take during the summer. May day #13 Design the perfect house Hope that helps.
What I have done with 2 of my children is this...as I go through magazines I cut out interesting or odd photos, usually ads, and glue them to the top of paper. That is the story starter! Sometimes the newspaper has good photos too. Geographic magazine photos too. I remember one fun one from a festival of some sort, the men were all playing an instrument with baskets over their heads! That made a great story starter! With these pictures instead of a sentence or two the student gets to do anything they want, and go anywhere with their story. That is why I like it better than the traditional story starter. Free, too!
My fifth graders had so much fun writing short stories to go with magazine pictures. The lesson was on using quotation marks so they had to include lots of dialog in their stories. They actually begged to do 'just one more'.
writing ideas Kids can brainstorm their own story starters. Ask them to write down things/people for each category. People you love. People you would like to meet (living or past) Hobbies/Sports Favorites Silly words Places you would like to visit Places you have visited etc. Put this in their writing folders. Have them circle the five most interesting things on the list. Have them brainstorm ideas/ story starters or research they would like to write about the topic. They will come up with tons of ideas. Realistic Fiction Fiction Informational Personal Narratives Letter Writing and more Have fun!
