Write Me a Story

Explicit Instruction/Teacher modeling

• Tell students that transition words help stories make sense by telling you the order in which events happen.
• Explain that you are going to write a story about what happened to you after school yesterday. In addition to using transition words, share that you are going to try to make your story have a strong ending.
• Tell students that sometimes stories end with “The End,” but that isn’t a very interesting ending. Share that you are going to try and make the ending of your story as interesting as possible.
• Give an example of an interesting ending to the story that was written in the introduction.

Guided Practice

• Review transition words and write them on the board or chart paper for reference.
• Write a quick story on the board, detailing what happened to you after school yesterday. Use at least two transition words and end with a statement like, “I can’t wait to see what happens to me tomorrow!”

Independent working time

• Hand out the After School Story worksheet to each student. Have students write about what happened to them yesterday after school.
• When students finish, they can work on the Trace the Transitions or Strong Endings worksheets.