What if?

In order to practise using our creative minds ready for a competition next week, Miss R-S thought it would be great fun to write a story (or stories) by using the 'What if?' question.

I have attached a PDF from Scholastic which focuses on 'Snappy Story Starters' and how we can encourage children to "unleash their imaginations and develop their creativity". You can either take a story starter from there or alternatively you can follow this link to Scholastic's 'Story Starters: Scrambler' for some inspiration...

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/story-starters/

Top Tips

Before you start writing.

Make sure you take time to think about different ideas before you start. You can either come up with your own ideas, use the resources above to trigger your imagination or use a familiar story as a starting point. 

When you have an idea(s) I would recommend you create a mind-map with some What if? questions.

For example, if I had recently read 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea' I might want to write my own story like this. This would be my mind-map...

Creating the characters.

When we think about stories in class, I always like to look at and discuss the characters with the children. I always ask them to think about who the main character is and their relationship to other characters in the story. 

To help you write your story I would suggest that you think about the characters that you want to include and then draw and/or create character profiles on them.

This might also be a good time to think about the setting for your story. Where will it take place? What will it look like there?

Planning.

It is always a good idea to make a plan of your story by thinking about the elements it needs to include. 

• A setting.
• The main character.
• Other characters. 
• The beginning - Where does your story begin and who with? 
• The middle - Is there a problem or situation? 
• The ending - Has the problem or situation be resolved? 

You can either complete a 'Story Map' or a comic strip to outline your plan. Alternatively I have attached a planning document that you can use to guide your thoughts. 

*Remember that your plans do not need to contain full sentences and that they can either be just pictures, pictures with words or bullet points without any pictures. The most important thing is that you can follow your plan when writing the story. 

Writing your story. 

Remember to always take your time when writing because if your handwriting isn't need you will struggle to read your work back to yourself. Think about where your capital letters need to be, the size of your fingers spaces and your full stops. 

When you are trying to spell make sure you use your 'Phonics Mat' and listen carefully to the sounds you make as you sound the word out on your arm. 

Take 'Pause Points' to read your work back to yourself to look for 'Marvellous Mistakes' or to remind yourself about what you have already written. 

Refer back to your plan to check you have included all of the ideas that you wanted to. 

* Remember that you don't need to complete the story in one go and can write it in sections. You can also re-write it with more detail as a second draft if you miss anything important. 

Some starting ideas from Miss R-S

• What if you put too much soap in the washing machine and the room turned into an ocean? 
• What if you were out playing in the garden and you saw a fairy? 
• What if you were eating dinner and a dancing hippopotamus walked in? 
• What if you started flying in the sky on your bicycle?
• What if your mum or dad changed colour when eating different vegetables? 
• What if you fell in to your favourite story? 
• What if your furniture started talking like in Beauty and the Beast? 

Have fun and be as creative as you can! 

I look forward to reading your creations.