Faced with PARCC and narrative writing a couple of years ago, I developed an instructional unit centered around narrative fiction writing. At the time, I wanted to help students develop their storytelling skills that could eventually be used in personal narrative writing that was going to be required in PARCC. Then PARCC went by the wayside for high school juniors in Illinois.
The fiction writing unit, though, was valuable and new and refreshing for me as a teacher, and the unit allowed the opportunity for creative collaboration for the students. Little did I know that keeping the unit in the course despite the exit of PARCC would be healthy and rewarding for all of us.
In year one, we used shared folders and shared documents through Google to collaborate crafting our stories. While I preferred partnerships or small groups, I did allow individual students to write their own stories.
The stories had to be prequels, sequels, or spinoffs of three short stories we had analyzed in class - short stories that were from our textbook. Students, then, first needed to possess a solid understanding of the short stories. For that reason, we analyzed the elements of the short stories and attempted to understand the author's purpose and his stylistic tools.
In year two, we continued to used shared folders and documents, but this time through Google Classroom. And in year two, we added the option of creating a story or a video. The option of creating a video really appealed to many students, and eventually six videos were submitted. Students quickly learned that creating an effective video wasn't the "easier" of the two options. In fact, a few groups had intended to create a video but later decided to submit stories.
This is year three, and what has helped is that I now have several examples of stories and videos that I have been able to share with this year's students. Students also examined three different stories than we had used in previous years. The previous stories weren't bad, but I've found that our ancient textbook really doesn't feature many women authors. This year, then, I decided to feature three short stories written by women that were in our course textbook.
Today is story/film festival day. It's the day we get to view all of the stories and films that students have been working on for the past two weeks. They can bring in popcorn that our FFA provides on Fridays or other treats and drinks they might take with them when they go to a movie. A new wrinkle this year, too, is that the stories had to be presented in some type of online book format. I encouraged students to search for free online book presentation apps, and I did show them how they could possible turn their story into online book format using Google slides.
Before arriving to class today then, students were required to load their videos and stories into a shared Google folder. This will help speed up the viewing process. We may not be able to collectively read all the short stories and view all the films in one period, but we will get to as many as possible. PLUS, I will then send an email out to parents asking them if they would like access to the shared folder, so they can view student work.
Below is a link to the project. I know this unit will continue to evolve, and I know there are other things that can be added to enhance the effectiveness and value of the unit. It's a start though. After the week I've had this week personally and professionally, having some fun festival time today will be refreshing.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TnDVm-SxZuoM2lAqZJJjFJouFviaWxTpbgpl4LuraW0/edit
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