"I Don't Know What to Write About?"

This might be my least favorite question these first few weeks of school. Close second is "Can't I write a fake story?"

So I have been racking my brain to figure out how to help my students. Luckily I had my teacher brain turned on when I was at a bookstore during vacation so I found this book.

After I got it, I realized it has been around for awhile. So if you were like me and don't know the story, a girl wants to write the best story ever to win a contest. She gets different suggestions and ends up with a fantasy story that is funny, action packed, tear jerker because those are the kind of stories she was suggested to write. She knows it is not quite right and doesn't know what to do until she gets advice to write what she really cares about. Then she can't stop writing. 

This is perfect to answer the question about fake stories to help students see it is easier to write about what you know. This is especially helpful if you use Writer's Workshop and focus a lot on small moment stories. 

After reading the story, we created and filled our brainstorms. I know there is a similar activity where students fill in a heart, but soon we are discussing the heart of a story so I didn't want students getting confused. 

Here is a copy of our brainstorm to use to fill with words and pictures of potential writing ideas so students don't have to whine say "I don't know what to write about". We also worked as class to make a general list of ideas so students could get more specific ideas on their brainstorms. Click on the picture to get it. 

Once the brainstorms were done students glued them to the front of their writing folders. 

We have slowly been working through the writing process. I created this visual to help us out. 

It can be found in this mini packet of writing process visuals and a visual I created to help plan out stories. This is something my students struggle with. There are different posters to match the writing process for different grade.  

The packet is available at my TpT store.