Realistic Fiction Writing

As much as I tried to make character analysis essay-writing fun for my students, it was SO refreshing to move on to our realistic fiction writing unit this week!  I love to hear my students respond, "YES!" when I ask them to get out their writer's notebooks for workshop.  But I have to say, I was a bit nervous to teach realistic fiction writing because I haven't taught it since my first year of teaching FIVE years ago.  This year, the unit was added to our writing calendar, and with the craziness of the school year, I decided to jump on TpT to see what I could find.  I knew that I wanted a variety of resources that mirrored our realistic fiction reading unit that we just concluded.  I also wanted something that I could easily copy for my students to glue into their writer's notebook.  So far, I've really enjoyed using these resources from TpT along with other mentor texts and activities.

Students started the unit reviewing the components of the realistic fiction genre, then jumped right in to brainstorming for their stories.

The real fun began when students were able to explore their characters by coming up with their external and internal character traits.  Since we studied characters so deeply in our reading unit, I was excited to see that the kids were eager to transfer what they had learned to their own writing this week.  

The kids were able to quickly brainstorm character traits and were excited to sketch out how their characters will act, look, and feel throughout their story.

Next Wednesday, Cynthia Lord, author of Rules, will be visiting our school, and will speaking to all fifth graders about the process of writing a book.  This is the third year that we've been fortunate enough to host Mrs. Lord, and I'm so excited for her to share her passion for writing; it's simply contagious, and I know that my students will be inspired to write even better stories after meeting and hearing her speak!  

Until next time!