Experience Explanations

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling

• Read the story Owl MoonOr another trade book of choice.
• Demonstrate the process of writing the sequence of events in the story (including the beginning, middle, and end) on a piece of chart paper.
• Write down examples of important details in the plot on the piece of chart paper or oversized sticky notes.

Guided practise

• Tell the students that they will be working in groups to create part of a story, which will be used to create a class story.
• Explain that the topic of the story is the events and experiences of the first day of school.
• Divide students into groups and distribute white paper or oversized sticky notes to each group.
• Assign each group a block of the day and ask the students to create both a visual and a sequence of events for that assigned block for the first day of school.
• After all groups are finished, invite each group to share their part of the writing and post it on the board.
• Invite classmates to give feedback on details that can be added to the story.

Independent working time

• Tell the students that their task is to now plan a narrative about something that was once difficult for them. This could be something new that they learned (such as learning how to ski) or a challenging time in their life.
• Distribute the worksheet Something Difficult and invite students to plan their writing on that graphic organizer.
• Circulate around the room and prompt students as needed.