Chain Writing

Shawn Reavis-Long

Purpose: The students will be able to interpret and evaluate a picture and work together in a group in order to contribute to the writing of a paragraph.

Materials: Photographs (clipped from magazines of books)

Blank paper attached to photographs

Pens

Music

Time: 20-30 minutes

Objectives:

NCTE Standards

• 3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).

NCSCS Standards

• Competency Goal 1 (6^th grade) The learner will use language to express individual perspectives drawn from personal or related experience.
• 1.01: Narrate a fictional or autobiographical account which:
• includes a coherent organizing structure
• tells a story or establishes the significance of an event or events

• 1.03: Interact appropriately in group settings by:
• contributing relevant comments connecting personal experiences to content.

Script/Procedure: Divide the class into groups of four and number the students 1-4. Each group is given a photograph of an interesting scene or situation.

Say: When the music begins, the first student begins to write a narrative about the photograph. After a few minutes, the music is stopped. Say: Student 2 needs to take the paper and read what student 1 wrote. When the music is turned back on student 2 will pick up the story where #1 left off.

This procedure continues around the group until all have had a turn. The last student in the group should attempt to end the tale.

PUBLISHING: Each student in the group reads aloud to the class the part of the story they have written.

NOTE: Depending on the age of the group, the teacher may need to add additional sheets of paper to make sure students have plenty of space to write their part of the story.