Focus Lesson Planning Sheet
Focus Lesson Imagining Stories We Wish Existed in the
World (adapted from Calkins and Cruz, 2006)
Topic
Materials
Connection
Explicit
Instruction
Anchor Chart:
How to Find Ideas for
Fiction:
-Observe your life and
the world for ordinary
small moments
-Reread your writer’s
notebook and imagine
how some entries may
lead to other possible
stories
Add:
-Ask yourself, “What
stories do I wish existed
in the world?” Let this
question lead you to
invent a character with
traits, struggles,
actions.
Entries from teacher’s writer’s notebook to demonstrate thinking
Story ideas from teacher’s life
Anchor chart (created after lesson yesterday), see below
Yesterday we talked about how writers who write fiction use
ordinary small moments from life to imagine story ideas. Today we
are going to talk about another way fiction writers think about
their story ideas. After our lesson, I created this anchor chart to
remind us what we talked about. Refer to anchor chart.
Writers collect ideas for fictional stories not only by finding small
moment entries that could grow into whole stories, but also by
imagining the stories they wish existed in the world. Sometimes we
write stories by thinking “How can I write a story for people like
me, or people like my brother, or people like my friend, so that we
see ourselves in stories?”
Often when we go to read a story, we want to read about someone
like ourselves, or someone we know. If that ever happens to you,
then you might want to invent a character and a story you wished
existed and that you could find and read.
Watch how I use this strategy. Engage in the following discussion,
but using your own example of a story of someone like you or
someone you know. I wish there were more stories about a girl who
has only brothers and so everything at her house seems to revolve
around boys and things the boys are interested in. And this girl
always feels a little different from her family because she is the
only girl and she wishes some of her interests were as important to
her family. So I’ll write this story idea in my notebook. Notice I
just didn’t write “girl with only brothers, no sisters.” Instead I
started to come up with a story plan by combining several ideas
about this girl and her family. So I might write “a girl with only
brothers, maybe 4, older and younger, or maybe just younger, who
feels like everything in her family revolves around her brothers and
their interests and that her interests don’t seem as important, and
this girl does something special, maybe some award or achievement,
that gets her family to realize her interests are important too”
Guided
Practice
Turn and talk to a partner about what you noticed in the way I
wrote my story idea and some of the things I put into it. Elicit
responses that it isn’t expressed broadly, but with some specific
ideas about the character, her traits, her struggles, her wishes, her
situation, etc.
Send Off [for
Independent
Practice]
Today we have talked about this new strategy for collecting ideas
for fiction. We can imagine the stories we wished existed in the
world and invent the characters of these stories, specifically their
traits, struggles, wishes, etc. I will add that to our anchor chart.
Today you can try this strategy. Imagine a story you wished
existed, one that included someone like you or someone you know.
Invent a character for that story, complete with traits, struggles,
wishes, etc. Then write a plan for that story, not just in a few
broad words, but trying to tell some specifics about that character.
Group Share
Students can share some of their fiction story plans.