Abbi's Story Starter

Last week I assigned the kids their first Story Starters writing assignment. Story Starters is an AWESOME book filled with...well, story starters! The point is to "stoke the fires of your child's imagination and awaken the creative writer within!" From the back of the book - "A story starter suspends a student in the middle of a predicament. He is then faced with the question, 'What happens next?' This is his cue to expand and embellish the story however he wants. He learns to write freely, with imagination and zest - and with far more boldness than he may be accustomed to." Last year, most writing assignments I gave the kids were met with anxiety, tears, procrastination and the inevitable, 'I don't know what to write about.' It got to be so draining and frustrating for me that I quit with the writing and said to myself, "we'll work on it next year." Lucky for me, one of the keynote speakers at our homeschool conference in May was Andrew Pudewa...and several of his talks were about writing. He was just the inspiration I needed! My notes from the conference are here somewhere on this blog. Anyway, my goal was to assign one writing assignment per week this school year. So far, we've done one poem and one 'source text' story. Both went over better than I expected without one single tear from any of us. To learn more about source text writing see this post.

So, last week was our first experience with Story Starters. I decided to give the kids 2 weeks for this assigment. We started last Tuesday and I told them they had until Friday to turn in their rough drafts. And this week would be spent fixing errors, polishing, and writing/typing the final draft. On Wednesday night over dinner I asked the kids if they had started on their stories and when all eyes looked down at their plates, I knew the answer. So I announced that instead of turning their rough drafts in to me, they would hand them in to the principal...Daddy! Jon was very happy to take this on for me and I went about my week not thinking again about the stories that were due. Friday came, we had dinner and then Jon announced we would be reading the stories out loud. Oh, what fun! I was filled with excitement as I saw the kids scramble to get their notebooks. Much to my amazement, they had each completed a story! They each took turns reading their stories to us and I must confess, I got teary-eyed listening to them. They did it! They actually wrote stories without tears, without frustration, without anxiety and best of all, not one of them complained about having nothing to write about. I think Karen Andreola (author of Story Starters) is on to something.

So, would you like to read their stories? I thought you would! Let me start by summarizing the Story Starter. The one I chose was about a father and child who go fishing. The father catches a trout. As he's reeling it in, a fish hawk comes out of nowhere, grabs the trout and flies off taking the father's fishing rod with it. The next Saturday, the two head fishing again but this time they take their dog, Chipper, along...so the kids have to finish the story. What will happen this time?

Here's what Abbi came up with. Her final draft was typed, so I just copied and pasted her work.

Just then Chipper saw a trout and jumped in after it! Of course, the trout got away. “Dad, look at Chipper!” “Well it looks like we're not going to catch any fish today, son.” All of a sudden, Chipper ran off into the woods chasing a squirrel! “Chipper, come back!” I said. “Just let him be, son,” my dad was laughing now. “He’s enjoying this.” Just then Chipper came back, looking defeated. “Lookey there, Dad. First the trout got away, then the squirrel got away.” Then Chipper saw a flock of swans swimming a few feet away. He started swimming quietly, slowly, and sneakily toward them. But, as you can imagine, the swans saw Chipper coming and flew off. “What’s Chipper going to see next?” I said laughingly. “I don’t know, but it might be that beaver coming this way,” my dad said. Just as he was finishing this sentence, we heard a series of barks coming from the river. As I turned around, I saw Chipper coming out of the water with the beaver in his mouth. He looked so proud of himself that my dad and I had to laugh. “Well lookey there, it looks like Chipper finally caught something,” I said. Just then the beaver slapped Chipper in the face with his huge tail! Chipper was so startled he let go of the beaver. Then a sad, dejected look came on Chipper's face. Then Chipper gave a yelp of pain, for he had stepped on a thorn bush. “Chipper, what happened?” I cried as Chipper came limping over to were I was standing. With a sigh he plopped down on a bed of moss. I went over to him and checked his paws. I finally found a thorn and pulled it out. “There you go, boy.” I said. Chipper jumped up and plunged into the water. When I looked into the water, I saw a turtle having a nice time swimming alongside the shore. Chipper was cocking his head at it when I got there, wagging his tail too. I picked up the turtle, which was in its shell, and inspected it to make sure it wasn’t hurt, and set it back down in the water. Then I held Chipper's collar until we couldn’t see the turtle anymore, and then I let go of him. Then I walked back to were my dad was sitting, finally with his fishing pole out. Then I got out my fishing pole and put some bait on it. I had just put my line out when I felt a tug on the other end of the line! I started reeling my line in. But, to my dismay the fish was too small and we had to throw it back into the water. Then my dad pulled one in, but it was too small also. Then I heard Chipper bark. It sounded far off. When I went to find Chipper, my dad stayed behind to fish. When I found Chipper he was looking at some berries, still barking. I picked one and put it in my mouth. It was juicy and sweet. It tasted so good that I called my dad and asked him to bring the fish bucket. (We hadn’t caught any fish yet), when he came, we started filling the bucket with berries. We filled it to the brim, but it was only half full by the time we got home. Then we realized that Chipper wasn’t with us, so we went back to the berries, and by that time the bucket was empty so we refilled it calling Chipper all the while. We finally heard a bark coming from the river. So we tramped back to the river and found all our fishing supplies, with Chipper guarding it. So we got all our stuff together and stopped one last time at the berry bushes, and then the three of us and the fishing supplies, went home.

Wasn't that fabulous?! Tomorrow I'll share Caleb's story with you.