Summer Career Connections Session 5, Day 2, Creative Writing: Short Stories
Day 2: We had a packed day two in Creative Writing: Short Stories! After a brief warm-up activity to help students wake up, we picked up where we left off with personification and characterizing inanimate objects. Students shared the stories that they invented for the stairs, lamp posts, trees, and benches, all of which were very entertaining! From there, we transitioned into a lesson on dialogue, and students created conversations between their inanimate objects. We also created some additional dialogue scenes and performed them for the class to get up, moving, and laughing.
In the afternoon, we transitioned from dialogue into characterization and character development. Students began to conceptualize and create a new character that they will use throughout the rest of the week. We brainstormed the character’s physical characteristics, personality, motivations, family, and background. We also took time to draw out visual representations of our characters and present them to the class!
Tomorrow, we will use the characters we created and put them in different worlds. We will start with a study of historical fiction, then we will move into fantasy/worldbuilding (a unit that many of the students have been eagerly anticipating).
Some dinner table questions:
- Which inanimate objects did you create a dialogue between? What happened in the scene?
- What did you write about for your performed dialogue scenes? Which was your favorite and why?
- What character did you create? What are some interesting facts/features about your character?
Have a wonderful evening!
Warmly,
Ms. Waxman and Mr. Knight