Teaching writing is fun and difficult, especially when you have fourth graders. Writing 3 vocab stories is the best activity for all your teaching needs.
The benefits of writing 3 vocab stories
- learn new vocabulary
- improve creativity
- practice writing
- practice revising
- learn to be concise
- submissions for contests
Learn new vocabulary
Students get long lists of spelling words every week. But do they really learn all those words? Usually they’ll remember them long enough for the spelling test.
If you really want students to learn those words, then focus on a few words. Three words is the perfect number. I have students write down three words in their reading response journals every day.
Three new vocabulary words are manageable. Students should look up the definitions so they know exactly what the words mean. They should include synonyms for those words. Now they will use those three unrelated words to write a story.
Improve creativity
Using three random words to write a story means students have to be creative. They have to see how these words can become connected. Making connections between random words makes students think.
Do these words belong to the same category? What parts of speech are they?
The best way to choose these three words is to use wheelofnames. Normally I would use it to choose random students. But this time I’m putting in mostly nouns. Sometimes I will include adjectives and verbs.
The students love being surprised. Which word will they get? In my last writing exercise, we got the words forest, debt, and pastels. Can you come up with a story using all three words?
Practice Writing
We all know that practice means improvement. You will only get better at something if you practice doing it. The same is true with writing.
Most students hate writing. Which means they will always think it is difficult. The more they avoid writing, the worst their writing gets. We have to stop this cycle. You have to show your students that they can improve their writing.
Start by writing three sentence stories. They can write the beginning, middle, and end. Then have then incorporate the three vocabulary words into those sentences. Let them know they may need a few more sentences.
Aim for five sentences. As they get better, increase the amount of sentences. Then tell them that they should be writing 100 word stories. Aim for 100 words, but it doesn’t need to be exact. They can aim for 50 words at first.
Practice Revising
Once students get in the habit of writing consistently, you can introduce them to revising. My first lesson on revision is including a hook. The first sentence should make your reader want to continue. It should hook your reader.
I will teach students to show, not tell. We add adjectives and sensory details. We add dialogue.
Sometimes we will find overused words and come up with synonyms. We will combine sentences so that there are a variety of sentence structures.
Then when they are ready, I tell them that the story needs to be exactly 100 words long. They will need to cut unnecessary words or add more details to make it longer. The challenge is to get it exactly right.
Giving them this 100 word stipulation means they will definitely need to revise. It is almost impossible to write a story at exactly 100 words the first time.
Learn to be concise
having a smaller word count means that every word needs to count. Students have to learn to be concise. They learn how to avoid unnecessary words and to use more active verbs.
By keeping the word count low, students don’t feel pressure to write a lot. It also makes revising easier because students also don’t need to read a lot.
The low word count makes peer feedback more manageable. If students have a wide range of word counts, it is more difficult to finish giving feedback in the same amount of time.
Submissions for contests
There are a bunch of writing contests throughout the year for students to enter. The word count for elementary students is 100 words.
Entering student writing contests boosts student confidence. In the last writing contest, 18 of my 22 students were accepted for publication.
We looked at one of the entries that didn’t get accepted. The students were able to figure out why it was rejected. They noticed that the ending didn’t make sense.
By putting student writing out into the world, students understand that their writing can have a larger audience. Their ideas are important.
Why you should write 3 vocab stories
I write a lot of 3 vocab stories with my students. I model how to connect three random words to create a story. Writing flash fiction helps me be more concise.
When you are done, submit your stories. You never know if someone will like it.
Here is my published flash fiction using forest, debt, and pastels. It is was published on 101words.org. After writing my 100 word story, I revised it by adding one more word so I could submit.
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