​We have been learning about writing “Small Moment” stories. We are trying to zoom in on a moment in time and stretch that moment out over several pages.  For example, we could write about our day at school but rather than writing about our entire day we can pick our favourite part of the day and write about that one moment. These moments are true events that actually happened. 

We used a watermelon to understand the difference between a small moment and a large topic.  For example, a large topic would be like a whole watermelon.  This would be like writing about a trip you took somewhere.  However, a small moment story is like a tiny seed in the middle of the watermelon.  A seed story would be one moment, like catching crabs on the beach during your trip.  There are many tiny seeds (small moments) that you can write about from a watermelon (large topic).  Try to come up with some small moments with your child they can write about at school.

 For example, writing about swinging on the swing set at the park could include lots of interesting and specific details (how great it made me feel, how I went so high I felt like I could touch the sky, how my boots filled up with rocks when I tried to stop, etc.) rather than writing about my entire afternoon spent at the park. Please talk to your child about small moment stories and see if he or she can come up with a few ideas and tell the details across their fingers.

It is easier to write about something that actually happened so they are able to add feelings and details. A student put it perfectly one writing workshop when I asked how she felt about the activity and she said “I don’t know because I haven’t done it yet.”

 We discourage them from writing descriptions of a movie or game as they are often confusing to the reader. As they say, “write about something you know.”

We have also talked about how to write a strong ending. Many students are able to stay on topic until the last page of their stories, but tend to wrap it up by saying something like “and then I went home” or “then it was bedtime, the end”. I am encouraging students to stay on topic (even as they are wrapping up their stories) by ending it with a feeling such as: “I had an amazing time making cookies with my Mom. I can’t wait to do it again!”

Another strategy authors use to end their story is to look at the first sentence they wrote and tie that into their ending. If the first sentence was “ I went shopping with my mom.” A wrap up ending could be “I had a great day shopping with my mom.”

As well as these strategies they are expected to print neatly, have space between words and to use proper punctuation. Their writing will be more interesting for the reader if fancy words are used, they include sentence stretchers to help add details and to connect choppy sentences.

Sight words are on the board and should be spelled correctly. It should be easy for the reader to read their spelling. For example, “I staied at my gramees” is phonetically correct making it easy to read. “I sed at my gams” is not using their sounds correctly and makes it difficult to read.​