STORY STEW
 
 
This program addresses the Writing Grade Cluster Benchmarks in the National Educational Standards for grades K-6.
 
 
THE PROGRAM: 
 
Story Stew is a program, which introduces children to the pre-writing – or thinking and planning - phase of writing.  Using three graphic organizers – story map, webbing, and story blueprint – children learn not only the basic ingredients of a story, but also how to explore those ingredients in detail and then blueprint it out. The program is in four parts.
 
I.     Introduction:
 
A.     Using a grease board or blackboard, a giant stew pot is drawn.  The audience is then questioned and asked to contribute ingredients that are used in stew.  Each ingredient is drawn in the stew pot as it is mentioned.
 
B.     Pattie then discusses how a story is like stew.  Each has special ingredients.
 
II.     Story Ingredients:
 
A.     Audience members are asked what they think the story ingredients are. 
 
B.     The three ingredients used in this presentation are:
 
      Main Character:  The person the story is about.
      Setting:  A story’s time and place.
      Plot:  What happens in the story.  The plot includes a problem, or obstacle that needs to be overcome, and a solution, or the way the problem in  the story is solved. 
 
C.     Beginning, middle and end are discussed in terms of what happens in each section of the story. 
 
III.   Putting a story together:
 
A.     The audience is invited to invent the names of three characters, three settings, and three problems.  For speed, Pattie has a list of characters, settings and plots that can be used.
 
B.     A vote is taken and the most popular character, setting and problem are used for the ingredients in this class story.  A story map is used to visually show the story ingredients.
 
C.     Webbing:  Webs are used to quickly flesh out the main character, setting and plot.
 
D.     A story board is drawn on the board.  With audience participation, a rough blueprint of the stories beginning, middle and end starts to take shape. 
 
      Pattie points out that, for ease, you can think of the beginning taking approximately 25% of the story, the middle approximately 50% of the story and the end approximately 25% of the story.
 
IV.    Questions and answers.
 
Teachers are encouraged to have each child write out the story that they created and blueprinted as a class.
 
Later, these stories can be shared with the class.  It is important to point out that each written story is different even though the same story ingredients were used.  This shows the students that their unique point of view makes their writing special from everyone else’s.