Writing
A Curricular Plan for the
Workshop
By Lucy Calkins and Colleagues from TCRWP
Grade 5 Unit Map
Fantasy Fiction (Teachers College Unit 5)
Overview
Time: April - May
Many teachers have found it helpful to launch fantasy writing after students have been immersed in the
genre as readers for a week or two. As this unit begins, you will teach your students to consider the
fantasies they have been reading during reading workshop, this time through the lens of a writer. As
readers, students will have already spent time analyzing structure and craft in fantasy picture and
chapter books. Now that it is time to write, they will try some of the craft moves they have noticed and
discussed while looking across several texts. By first writing a fantasy as a shared class experience,
students will learn to describe fantastical worlds as they create atmospheric settings, insert magical
objects or characters, use symbolism to guide the reader toward interpretation, etc. Mistakenly
believing that anything goes in a fantasy, students easily spin out of control when writing in this genre.
They need to understand that, “All fantasy should have a solid base in reality” (Sir Max Beerbohm). In
this unit, students should be expected to use all that they have learned about narrative writing in earlier
units with greater control and finesse.
Part One: Collecting Ideas for Fantasy Fiction – Finding Story Ideas That Have Depth and Significance
 Administer the On-Demand Fantasy Writing Assessment before beginning teaching
 Provide time for students to immerse themselves in picture books and short story collections with
short, finely crafted fantasy stories with streamlined plots that represent a variety of cultures.
 Provide a collection of photographs, geologic guides, nonfiction books on animals and the
environment, baby name books, and/or dictionaries to help students bring some realism to their
fantasy.
 Guidelines for Part One of the unit: make sure students keep fantasy stories grounded in some way
in the real world and move quickly through the collection of story ideas. Students should draft quick
“story blurbs” that include a single arc storyline with one or two main characters and only a couple
of obstacles. Ask writers to choose one episode to develop fully when they seem to be thinking of
an epic storyline.
 Caution: Encourage students to draft several story possibilities before choosing a story to develop
fully. “Date around a few ideas, before getting married” (Carl Anderson) to avoid stories that are
heavy on plot, light on craft and structure, and too long to revise well.
 Story ideas might come from imagining how events and issues from your own life could be turned
into a fantasy, and by imagining how a real world setting might lead a character to another world.
Part Two: Developing Your Story – Shaping Fantastical Yet Believable Characters and Plots
 Help students choose the “blurb” with the best possibility of sharing a compelling message.
 Take time to “write long” about the setting and the main character.
 Require and carefully monitor story planning strategies to be sure there is a clear path that leads to
the ending. Remind students how to use timelines, story mountains, etc. Coach students to write
two or three well-developed scenes to avoid complicated, lengthy narratives that are simply
summaries of the plot.
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Part Three: Drafting and Revising – Crafting a Compelling Fantasy Fiction Story
 Teach only one or two drafting minilessons. Move quickly to revision minilessons to help students
incorporate the qualities of good writing into their drafts as they write.
 Provide time for students to tell their stories to a partner and to focus their imaginations by closing
their eyes and “picturing” directly before they write.
 Fantasy writers get readers to suspend disbelief by writing specific descriptions about key
characters, settings, and objects. When including magic in a story, introduce it early.
 Remind students to use all they have learned about narrative writing when writing fantasies (i.e.
balance action, thought, and dialogue).
 New strategies could include how to make settings and objects into symbols to achieve deeper
meaning; how purposeful use of longer and shorter sentences speed up/slow down action.
Part Four: Editing and Publishing – Preparing the Fantasy Story for Readers
 Ask students to look at mentor texts as they put finishing touches on their stories. Look at
punctuation usage in longer sentences, spelling of made-up words, and conventional spelling.
 Some students could publish their writing as a picture book since visuals work well for fantasies.
During this unit:
 Select captivating, well-written mentor texts to support students in this work
 Choose a small number of texts that resemble those structures you hope your students will use
to structure their own writing in this unit
 Based on the On-Demand Fantasy Writing Assessment, choose the features you will want to
highlight in your mini-lessons
Stage 1 – Common Core State Standards and Indicators– What must students know and be able to do?
Writing:
Text Types and Purposes
 5.W.03 – Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective
technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
a) Orient the reader by establishing a situation and introducing a narrator and/or
characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally.
b) Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, description, and pacing, to develop
experiences and events or show the responses of characters to situations.
c) Use a variety of transitional words, phrases and clauses to manage the sequence of
events.
d) Use concrete words and phrases and sensory details to convey experiences and events
precisely.
e) Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.
Production and Distribution of Writing
 5.W.04 Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development and organizations are
appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
 5.W.05 With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as
needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.
Range of Writing
 5.W.10 Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision)
and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks,
purposes and audiences.
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Speaking and Listening:
 5.SL.01 Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and
teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others’ ideas and
expressing their own clearly.
c) Pose and respond to specific questions by making comments that contribute to the
discussion and elaborate on the remarks of others.
Essential Questions for Students
Guiding Questions for Teachers
How do fantasy fiction writers collect ideas to
keep their fantasy grounded in the believable?
How can I help students to keep their fantasy ideas
grounded in the believable?
How do fantasy writers shape fantastic, yet
believable characters and plots?
How can I help students create fantastic characters
and plots that are believable?
How do fantasy fiction writers prepare their
writing for an audience?
How can I help students revise their pieces for an
audience?
Stage 2– Common Assessment – What is the evidence of understanding?
Universal Screens
Formative Assessment Strategies
Common Unit Assessment:
Fantasy Fiction Criteria Checklist
On-Demand Fantasy Writing Assessment
“Our next unit is going to be fantasy, and I would love
to know what you already know about writing fantasy
stories. Would you please write a fantasy Small
Moment story, including everything you know about
writing strong narratives and everything you know
about fantasy?” Level 8 on the Continuum for
Narrative Writing is aligned to the Gr. 5 expectation on
CCSS.
During unit assessments:
Independent writing conferences
Daily observation and assessment of student work
Stage 3 – Instruction – What learning experiences will lead to understanding?
Skills:
Key Terms/Vocabulary
single arc storyline
epic storyline
story blurb
obstacle
symbols/symbolism
expert vocabulary (example:
medieval, feast, minstrel, gown, etc.)
internal/external motivation
scene
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imagination
portal
quest
cadence
suspense
atmospheric setting
interpretation
suspend disbelief
reality
hero
antihero
One Possible Sequence of Teaching Points
(A Note To Teachers: Please remember that this is one possible sequence of teaching points. Based on
the students in your class, you may decide to spend more time on some things and less on others. This
is a guide to help you make decisions based on the learners in front of you.)
Additionally, teachers should consider that some of the following teaching points may be more
appropriately addressed during the concurrent FPS reading inquiry unit.
Part One: Collecting Ideas for Fantasy Fiction – Finding Story Ideas That Have Depth and Significance
 “One way fantasy writers get ideas for stories, as strange as it might sound, is by studying our own
lives. We can reread our writer’s notebooks, think about issues that matter to us or simply
moments in our lives, and then reimagine these things as fantasy story ideas. We can turn our fear
of the dark into a story about a brave peasant boy who lives in a world of darkness and must learn
to cast a spell to bring back the sun.”
Possible mid-workshop teaching point: “Another way that writers might begin collecting ideas for
fantasy is by thinking about possible plots, or quests. We can use a lot of what we know from
writing realistic fiction and create story blurbs that include some of what we already know and are
changed just a bit to reflect the nature of a story based on a quest: ‘Somebody had to . . . because .
. . but . . . so . . . yay!’”
 “Writers can begin collecting ideas for fantasy stories by thinking about characters— using all the
strategies they know about developing characters from other kinds of fiction (internal, external,
motivations, and so on). Since the main character in fantasy is a hero, it is often tempting to make
the character perfect, but just like in realistic fiction, the best characters need to feel ‘real’ with
flaws, weaknesses, and strengths, and the writer must develop the character knowing that she or
he will change by the end of the quest.”
Possible mid-workshop teaching point: “From reading fantasy, we’ve learned that fantasies have
very purposeful settings. We know that settings can be magical or nonmagical, or the setting can
begin in our world and the characters can move into a magical world. Today I want to teach you
that if you want to begin, or end up, in a magical place, you can imagine that setting as if it were
our world and all that it entails, but different somehow. You can play a mind game of ‘what if?’ to
help your imagination get going.”
Part Two: Developing Your Story – Shaping Fantastical Yet Believable Characters and Plots
 “Writers are powerful. We have the power to change the people who read our stories. When we
choose a story idea, we want to choose an idea that has the potential to change the way a reader
thinks, feels, or acts. Once we’ve chosen that idea, we need to take the seed that we began with
and set about developing the other elements of the story. If we chose a seed from character
development, we still need to develop setting and plot. If we chose plot, we’ll need to develop
character and setting. Use the same strategies from the last few days to develop what you need
to.”
Possible mid-workshop teaching point: “Writers can develop setting by visualizing the place and
thinking about how the place affects the character. To do this, you might consider sketching out a
map of your world, the way C. S. Lewis did with Narnia or Tolkien did with Middle Earth.”
 “Today I want to teach you that writers plan our stories in a way that works best for us. We have
already learned several ways to plan this year: timelines, story booklets, story mountains, and
more. When you go off to write today, think of the planning method that will help you do your best
writing work.”
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Part Three:
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“As the famous poet Robert Frost once said, ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No
surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.’ For a fantasy writer to write a convincing
fantasy story, he or she must first get lost in that story. Today I want to teach you that one of
the best ways for writers to begin drafting fantasy stories is to close our eyes and allow
ourselves to get lost in the stories we are about to write, let our imaginations picture every little
thing we are about to draft on paper, and then begin to write. We know that as we draft, we
want to get lost in the stories of our own imaginations, much the way we get lost in the stories
we read in reading workshop. When the writer gets lost in his or her own story, it is more likely
the reader will get lost in it.”
“Today I want to teach you that fantasy writers draft knowing that they are going to have to do
a little convincing to get their readers to suspend disbelief and make a world that rings true. One
of the ways to do this is to make the world of the story as realistic-feeling as possible, even if the
ideas are completely unrealistic. We can study the writers we’ve been reading and notice how
one of the strategies they use is to use as much specificity as possible. For example, it’s not just
a piece of paper but a piece of parchment rolled into a scroll and wound tight with twine.”
“Today I want to teach you that another way to be sure to suspend disbelief for our readers is
to make sure that anything magical that is important to the story is introduced fairly early on so
that the readers are not taken by surprise when that element is used. In other words, if the
prince is going to be rescued from the giant by a magic shoe, the magic shoe needs to have been
shown earlier in the story.”
“Today I want to teach you that it is important in every story that the writer stays in the
moment whenever possible, by writing in scenes with action, thoughts, and dialogue, not just
writing in summary. This is even more crucial in fantasy because so much of the story comes
from the writer’s imagination, so nothing can be taken for granted. Something as simple as a
table, which in realistic fiction people could completely understand, needs to be described if it is
important or different. Is the table actually a magical creature? Is it made from a sacred wood?
Does it talk? These are things the reader needs to be shown—not just told.”
“Today I want to teach you that some very big work in fantasy is knowing how to grapple with
passage of time, in other words, when we need to write in the moment, or in scene, and when it
makes sense to write in summary. In general, important plot points should be written in scenes
and swaths of time that move us from one plot point to the next can be told in summary. It
often helps to look at mentor authors to see how they accomplish this.”
Part Four:
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“Today I want to teach you that in addition to doing the usual fixing up to make sure that
everything in our writing is correct, we can also edit for craft. One thing we might consider is
cadence—how different speakers will have a different rhythm to the way that they speak. For
example, the rhythm of the king’s speech will probably be different than a peasant’s. We can
show that difference in cadence by using different kinds of punctuation.”
“Today I want to teach you that fantasy stories have a very identifiable sound and language. The
vocabulary in particular can really stand out. For example, instead of a singer, we might find a
minstrel. Instead of a meal, there might be a feast. When writing fantasy stories, we want to be
sure to use fantasy-type vocabulary throughout the story, not just at the beginning. Also, if
there are no words that already exist for creatures, places, and things in our stories, we might
need to create our own language and make sure it’s consistent throughout the story.”
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“Today I want to teach you that when fantasy writers are editing, we want to pay special
attention to spelling—after all, nothing pulls a reader out of a story faster than a misspelled
word. We want to make sure all our spelling is correct, and we also want to make sure that even
words we make up are spelled according to conventional rules. Long vowel sounds should be
spelled the way we would expect them to be spelled, for example.”
Publishing with an audience in mind: “When writers have completed all the hard work of
finishing their pieces, they know they have one last step—to publish their pieces. Fantasy
writers take special care to fancy up their writing so that it reflects the hard work they have put
into the pieces.”
Resources:
Calkins, Lucy and Colleagues. 2011. A Curricular Plan for the Writing Workshop Grade 5. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.
Calkins, Lucy and Colleagues. 2011. Continuum for Assessing Narrative Writing.
www.readingandwritingproject.com
Levine, Gail Carson. Writing Magic. (written for children)
Mentor Texts:
Asher, Sandy. But That’s Another Story (anthology) includes “Family Monster”
Carus, Marianne. Fire and Wings: Dragon Tales from East and West (anthology)
Coville, Bruce and Alix Berenzy. A Glory of Unicorns (anthology)
dePaola, Tommie. Strega Nona (level M)
Fleischman, Paul. Weslandia (level P)
Melmed, Laura Krauss. The Rain Babies
Nolen, Jerdine. Raising Dragons (level O)
Say, Allen. Stranger in the Mirror
Steptoe, John. Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters (level N)
Yolen, Jane. Merlin and the Dragons (level U)
Clips from older fantasy films such as: Willow, The Princess Bride, or The Dark Crystal
Websites and Technology
http://readingandwritingproject.com/resources/classroom-libraries/current-classroom-libraries.html
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