Writing stories with children

[Lliana]

I've read some messages mentioning students writing and illustrating stories once specific vocab is taught. For example, after being taught simple structures such as: "The dog is near the chair" or "The balloon is blue" or "Mary is short", students are asked to write and illustrate a story using what they've learnt. I've done similar structures with adjectives, colours and prepositions of place with my class of 8, 9 and 10-year-olds (yes, they're all in the same class) and would like to do sth creative and different. Of course, I don't know whether we can write stories with such limited vocabulary but the whole thing sounds like a good idea. Yet, I have no clue how I could do this. I cannot imagine how to start because we've never done sth more apart from simple family books, where they draw and colour their family and write: This is my father etc. Or, draw and colour pictures of their room and label the things in it; very simple things really. I also have to take the different age groups into consideration.
It's a rather noisy and unruly class (bright and creative though) and it's not easy to tell them to work in groups as they fight a lot.
Of course, I'm also interested in creating stories with other classes as well, where kids belong to the same age group and have a less chaotic attitude. I know there's a good book by OUP, "Creating stories with children" but haven't managed to get it yet.
Any ideas? Thanks.

Liana

[mesmark]

Liana - I have had some success with using fantasy vocabulary and have students draw the fantasy cards and make a short and simple story up as we go, obviously with direction at first.

ex:

card 1 = Princess: There was a lovely princess. She lived in a village.
card 2 = Ogre: The ogre came to the princess's village. He was very mad.
card 3 = sword: The ogre was looking for the magic sword. He lost the sword.
card 4 = King: The king said go away. The pretty princess didn't like him.
.....

I actually draw cards and have them play bingo at the same time. At first I help out a lot but after a few times the kids get the idea and start making up a lot of things on their own. You'd be supprised at how many times people get shot with arrows. no, wait

Another idea is to make up some place cards for the students and list all the possible things they could do there, what they might see, and who they might meet. Then have the students try to come up with a story about what they did at that place yesterday.

- Mark
www.mes-english.com