a stylized question mark made from the words who, what, where, when, why and howConnecting Reading and Writing: Traditional Stories

Goals:

  • Plan a story outline

Yesterday, you developed three or four ideas for writing a pourquoi story of your own.

Select one of your ideas to develop into a story.

e.g. Racoons – have a ‘mask’ on their face, have rings on their tails, sometimes wash their food

Write the title of your story. The title describes what you are explaining through this pourquoi story.

e.g. How Racoon got her mask.

Briefly describe what your animal character was like at the beginning of the story.

e.g. Racoon had beautiful grey fur on her face. Racoon was proud of her grey fur. Racoon liked to eat, and eat, and eat!

Describe the problem in the story that your animal character faces.

e.g. Racoon made fun of Black Bear’s fur. Racoon was a bully.

Explain how the problem leads to your animal character’s trait. This is what your story explains.

e.g. Black Bear wanted to teach Racoon a lesson. Black Bear tricked Racoon into sticking her head into a hole filled with black berry juice. The juice stained Racoon’s face with a black mask.

Keep your story plan for tomorrow, when you will expand your story outline and draft your pourquoi story.

Other Opportunities:

Another way to plan your story is to create a simple storyboard: Sketch a series of pictures showing key events in your story. Write simple captions to explain each event. You can also add speech bubbles to show dialogue.