It's important to share and discuss ideas in your writer's notebooks! In my classroom, we mostly use our Writer's Notebooks for pre-writing. Part of the pre-writing step of the writing process, I believe, needs to involve students talking to each other (out loud) about the ideas for writing they are working on; when you talk out a story or report idea before being handed a blank piece of paper to write a rough draft, the actual drafting becomes easier, and the draft--I believe--is better. I try to build an environment in my classsroom where students share ideas they've put into their notebooks. I like the lesson on this page because, while and after my students work on this two-page spread, they have lots of opportunities to talk about/explain the idea behind the mostly-wordless storyboard they create. Hey students, if you're plannning on doing this notebook challenge, I expect you to explain your storyboard's story to friends you are working with during share time.
 A note for my students (and visiting teachers)...I'll admit that this lesson probably won't make much sense to you if you haven't first taken a look at the picture book (a.k.a. mentor text) shown at right; its story-telling technique is what inspired this lesson. For my students, just ask me, and I'll let you look through the book in class or after school; for teachers finding this lesson, look for this picture book the next time you're at the bookstore. The story is very Halloween-y (yeah, that's right; I'm making up words today!), which is why I made it my GT notebook challenge for October. The tale you storyboard--if accepting my challenge on this page--doesn't have to be about anything related to Halloween; my model below, as you'll see, does not. You also don't have to use a school as your setting (like in the mentor text) or a house (like in my example). I dare you to choose a unique setting, if you can think of one. I double-dog dare you!
How I found this mentor text: When taking a break in between watching plays every summer in Ashland, Oregon, I often find myself browsing through the downtown comic book store while my wife is shopping for clothes next door. In August of 2011, I found a new-to-me book called P.T.A. Night by Jeremy R. Scott. I immediately purchased this graphic-novel-of-sorts, saying, "My Gifted & Talented kids will love this idea!"
Each page of this picture book features the same structural view of a three-story middle school, and the reader can study each room's picture to see what's going in various places around the school: the kitchen, the basement, the P.T.A. meeting room, the science room, etc. When you turn the pages, you see the same structure, but new things are happening in the different rooms. Eventually a whole crazy Halloween story unfolds, and characters who started in one room end up in different rooms, complementing each other's different storylines. It's a pretty talented way to tell a story.
When I saw the book, I asked, "Could I create a similar story? What if I had four different rooms in a house, and something different was going on in each room? If I showed the same house four times, changing what was going on in each room with each new layout, what kind of stories would unfold?" I immediately began sketching initial ideas on some scratch paper.
Sharing my writing/thinking process for this task: The first thing I decided--as I prepared to imitate the structure and ideas behind the mentor text--was that I needed a character to move from room to room as the story progressed. So I drew all four versions of the house, labeled the four rooms (kitchen, living room, study/office, and bedroom), and I planned for a character that would move between the rooms. I decided my "moving character" would be the dog that lived with the family in the house. For a simple story-line, I decided the dog would be very thin in the first blueprint panel of the house, and as it moved from room to room, another family member would feed it; in the fourth and final version of the house, the dog will have gained some noticeable weight. I drew this storyline first, moving the dog to four different characters who would be feeding him or her in the different rooms; in each picture, the dog gains a little bulk.
Below is the initial story I sketched out. In blueprint #1, the dog visits the kitchen; in blueprint #2 (bottom of first page), the dog visits the living room where it meets another family member; in blueprint #3 (top of second page), the dog--getting fatter--is visiting a different family member in the study/office; in fourth and final blueprint, the dog visits a fourth family member in the upstairs bedroom.
Click here (or on the image above) to be able to zoom in on details.
The process continues...my four-panel story for the kitchen: With a dog who moves between the rooms in all my blueprints, I was ready to map out a short, four-panel story to happen in each of the blueprint's rooms. I already had one character in each room feeding the dog at different times. I needed to figure out what each character could be doing in each room's remaining three boxes. Starting with the kitchen, I asked, "What could happen after this character fed the dog some of the soup from the stove, which happens in my first blueprint panel. I decided that maybe the dinner needed to get burned in the three remaining panels.
And so...I added three more images to tell a story that occurs in my blueprint's kitchen: In panel 1, the dog is fed; in panel 2, the dinner starts smoking when the kitchen-character isn't paying attention; in panel 3, there are flames and a fire extinguisher; in panel 4, the character is exhausted and looking over the mess. Voila! I had a kitchen-story mapped out in the four kitchen panels.
You might notice--on the image below--that I started adding labels to some of the items I drew but didn't think would be recognizable without my explanation. I can't draw a very good fire extinguisher!
Click here (or on the image above) to be able to zoom in on the details.
The process continues...my four-panel story for the living room: The story in the kitchen was completed, so now I moved on to the living room's story. This was a bit trickier because the dog--instead of being in the first panel--makes his visit in the middle of the four-panel story, so I knew nothing critical could happen in the first box. In my original living room picture with the dog (in panel #2), the dog was eating out of a bowl as my character sat on the couch watching TV. So... I decided the first blueprint panel would simply have the character turning on the TV. After the dog's visit in the second blueprint, I asked myself, "What could happen here that might be strange?" I thought, Maybe that couch could start floating for no reason. And so... panels #3 and #4 for the living room have the couch lifting off and then getting a bit higher.
I know that's kind of a crazy, unexplained story-line, but remember a writer's notebook is a place to have fun with small, interesting (and perhaps crazy) ideas. These ideas can become bigger stories later on when we have a writer's workshop day. I look at that crazy, unexplained flying couch I have storyboarded, and I think to myself, "This is an interesting idea for a story that I might have fun with later on in a longer piece of writing. I think The Floating Couch would make a great story title for it."
With this storyline, I thought it was necessary to add dialogue bubbles to help my reader understand the crazy story a bit better.
Click here (or on the image above) to be able to zoom in on the details.
The process continues...my four-panel story for the upstairs bedroom: Now I switched my "thinking gears" and pondered what might happen in that upstairs bedroom, where the dog visits last in the four blueprints I had originally established. In my original dog-moves-through-the-house storyline, the dog is drinking from the character's glass, and that character is lying on the bed in the bedroom in the fourth blueprint panel. I thought it would be boring if that character was in bed for all four panels, so I had to ask, "What might put that character in that bed for the fourth panel?" I immediately thought of exercise, and for some reason I thought of the barbell set of weights I had when I was in middle school. My four-panel storyboard for the bedroom became about lifting weights and hurting one's back while doing it...so that the character had a reason to end up in the bed.
If you are paying close attention to my evolving drawings, you'll see that--to do this--I had to modify my original picture (the one where the dog comes in to the bedroom) to now include those barbells. I think that's a form of revision!
I was excited as I finished this storyline for the upstairs bedroom because--if you look at the third blueprint--I now had my first complete blueprint! Three more individual panels, and my whole storyboard would be complete!
Click here (or on the image above) to be able to zoom in on the details.
The process continues...my four-panel story for the study/office: It was time for the final room: the study/office, where I knew the dog would visit in the third blueprint. In that original storyboard, I had a character sitting at a computer, feeding the dog from a bag that I assumed would be potato chips. I needed a storyline to lead up to this. I thought "There are potato chips and there are computer chips," and a story idea started unfolding in my crazy brain. I thought, "What if the computer was hungry for chips too, but not potato chips? Maybe for memory chips." I hatched a storyline that has the computer calling out to the character and asking for his chips in the first two blueprint panels. I already had the dog visiting in the third blueprint and eating the chips, so I added a dialogue bubble to that panel that had the computer now asking, "What about me?" as the dog eats the bad of chips. In the final panel, I decided the character should un-plug the computer, thinking this whole talking computer situation is just a bit too weird.
And voila! I had four blueprints (each with four panels) that told five different stories, if you studied them carefully: there's a story of a dog getting fatter, and there are four stories going on in each room of the house.
The next time I need to write something during writer's workshop, I have five story ideas that might become longer stories. Which of my five story ideas do you think would make the best piece of writing? Think about it and tell me when you see me in class next time! I dare you!
Click here (or on the image above) to be able to zoom in on the details.
A final challenge for my students or for my fellow teachers using this lesson idea: I know some of you will take this challenge and create a fun page in your writer's notebook that celebrates language and homophones. I dare you to take a photograph of your finished page and post it as an attachment at this page that I set-up at WritingFix's Ning. You will have to become a member of the Ning in order to post. Click here to visit the posting page I set-up specifically for this lesson! If you post it here, you could very well have your finished page seen by thousands of teachers and students who use my website every year! Make sure what you post is pretty good stuff!
A Gallery of my Students' Blueprint Storyboards! |
Only a few students took me up on September's Homophone Comics Notebook Challenge, but for this Blueprint Storyboard challenge, I had over a dozen kids working on this task during sacred writing time. They have just started to show me their finished products, and I am planning on posting as many as I can to show the variety of thinkers I am dealing with this year. The best part of this assignment, it turns out, is listening to the kids explain their blueprint storyboards to each other; these images are rich with original storylines.
6th grader Mimi's storyboard centered around honey. |
Part of 6th grader Ryan's storyboard takes place inside a giant fish.. |
Swinging spiders and accidental fires populate 6th grader Kendall's storyboard. |
Nathanael--7th grader--designed a storyboard to rival Hitchcock's Rear Window. |
I always admire 8th grader Alex's devotion to adding color! |
Carin--an 8th grader--luckily included a trampoline to save one character! |
There are multiple conflicts happening in 7th grader Cyrus's storyboard. |
When I saw the hypnosis room, I knew this was from 7th grader Emily! |
7th-grader Guillermo was clearly feeling like telling a horror story. |
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Taylor--6th grader--has high technology represented in her storyboard! |
7th grader Adrienne packed her storyboard with lots of characters! |
Crissey, one of my 8th graders, loves to include that pig character. She actually has a song she sings to teach others to draw the same pig. Funny stuff! |
Visiting Teachers:
If you use this lesson with your own students and have a sample (or two) to share, I'd love to see them. There is a posting page set-up where you can attach digital photos of your kids' notebook pages!
--Corbett _______________________ |
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