Write a Spooky Story

by Sally Ann Stanley
Topics: Fourth Grade, Writing

By exploring various writing techniques, such as descriptive vocabulary and foreshadowing, your child is expanding his writing repertoire. Here’s a fun at-home activity that will help your child exercise his creativity and strengthen his analytical skills.

What You Need:
paper
pencil

What You Do:

Step 1. Explain to your child the purpose and meaning of descriptive vocabulary and foreshadowing. Here's a cheat sheet:

Foreshadowing- when an author hints at something that will happen later on in the story.

Descriptive language- descriptive language is all about the use of rich adjectives which employ the use of the senses:

sight: including colors, sizes and shapes, such as round, green, large
sound: including types and volume, such as quiet, grating, and banging
smell: including scents and strengths, such as flowery, foul, strong
taste: including flavors and strengths, such as tart, spicy, weak
touch: including textures and temperatures, such as silky, damp, hot

Step 2. Provide your child with a story starter. This helps get the creative juices flowing. Some examples:

“One dark, stormy night, I walked down the street and I saw.....”
“One Halloween I night I was trick-or-treating with my brother. We knocked on Old Mr. Payne’s door and...”
“I was riding my skateboard home from school when I took a short cut through the cemetery.”

Step 3. Help your child create a story map. This is an outline for fiction stories. It includes setting, characters, the problem the characters face, major events, and the solution for the problem. Your child can draw boxes or circles around the main parts of the story and then draw lines showing their connection. Story maps can take many forms. The most important step is to organize the main parts around the plot.