Writing Fiction Stories: Beginning, Middle, and End

     The other day I was working with my 2nd graders on writing the beginning, middle, and end of a fiction story. Because I'm in a practicum class and haven't been with class long enough to know what exactly my students are knowledgeable of, I randomly chose a group of students to work with during this lesson. I was surprised by the creativity of their stories and how much they already knew about writing fiction stories!

     We had read the story, "The Three Little Pigs" by Bernadette Watts, the day before during whole group reading.

http://www.booktopia.com.au/three-little-pigs-hans-christian-andersen/prod9780735840584.html

My kids love to end the day with a story, so I figured a fairytale was a good way to start the discussion of fiction stories and what components each section of the book has. After the book was read we talked about the sequencing of events and what the problem/solution was in the story. The next day is when I started my lesson. 

     The first thing we discussed was what they already knew about writing fiction stories. One student raised her hand and said there was a beginning, middle, and end (perfect start to my lesson). I had my students elaborate about what those sections were made up of and we made a list:

Beginning: Main characters, setting, and problem introduced
Middle: Problem introduced (sometimes), what the characters do in the story
End: How the problem was solved, conclusion

     After our discussion, I decided to see if they could put their brains to work by getting their ideas onto paper. Their stories had to be fiction stories that had a problem and solution, at least one main character, and a setting. I also had students create a story organizer before writing the story, which helped them figure out who the characters would be, what setting they wanted, and what they wanted to include in their beginning, middle, and end. Two days later, my students handed in their work. The results were very telling about what they knew and what I needed to focus on for the next writing lesson.
     My students created a range of both realistic fiction and fantasy stories that were surprisingly creative. For example, I had a student write about a classmate losing a book then creating a lost and found for her school, and I had another student write about an elephant having his trunk stolen by a giant hawk, which it eventually ended up giving the trunk back. Also, it was clear that all my students knew how to write the beginning, middle, and end of a story and knew how to incorporate a problem and solution into their stories.
     My students had many strengths in their writing, but even with their strengths, one thing that I noticed in their writing was the amount of detail in a story. Most of the stories mentioned the main characters and sometimes the setting, but students didn't elaborate on what each character looked like or gave detail as to where the setting was taking place, which doesn't allow the reader to get the full effect of the story.
     My students need to work on detail, so I think my next step would be to teach lessons about the importance of detail. I would focus on adjectives first and how it's important to describe characters, settings, and events in the story so that the reader can attempt to imagine what the author is trying to show. Without descriptive language, stories aren't as interesting to readers. Some of the lessons I would plan would include showing examples from books and going over the types of words used to describe the story. Activities related to comparing differences between stories with detail and without would be interesting to use as well. But, details in a story don't just have to be describing words. Often times the author can add dialogue with emotion to add more effect. For now, I think sticking with adjectives would be the best next step.
     A common trend that I noticed in my students' work was their use of punctuation and phonics. Some students were using periods instead of commas or using capital letters even when the word wasn't at the beginning of the sentence or a proper noun. I could tell that they were using phonics because even though a word was spelled incorrectly, most of the time I was able to figure out what it was because they spelled it the way the word is pronounced. For example, a student wrote "thay" instead of "they," or some students left off the silent letter "e" in "little." First, let me explain that I didn't mark off for miscues like these. Because these are common miscues of 2nd graders and punctuation/spelling was not apart of my lesson, I don't see how I could possibly take off points for these miscues. I do think that punctuation and spelling are important, but not to the extent of creating meaningful pieces of work and that's what my lesson was covering. I think the best approach to these types of miscues are minilessons. Depending on the number of people making these types of miscues, minilessons could be given in whole group, small group, or individually. 
     Overall, I thought the lesson went well and I think I gained a lot of information about my students and their writing. It's interesting to see the various types of topics and writing conventions students come up with and use in their pieces. I liked the discussion at the beginning because students are able to brainstorm ideas, present them to their peers, which could in turn help generate more ideas from others. Also, I think small group worked well with this lesson because I was able to see where people were and where they wanted to go. I could give more attention to their work and give them feedback that would help improve their writing.