From Fact to Fiction: Drawing and Writing Stories

Overview

Featured Resources

From Theory to Practice

 

OVERVIEW

Getting children to use their imaginations when writing a story can sometimes be difficult. Drawing, however, can create a bridge between the ideas in a child's head and the blank piece of paper on the desk. In this lesson, students use factual information gathered from the Internet as the basis for creating a nonfiction story. Story elements, including setting, characters, problem, solution, and endings, are then used as a structure for assembling students' ideas into a fiction story.

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FEATURED RESOURCES

Venn Diagram: Students use this interactive tool in the lesson to compare and contrast frogs and toads.

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FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

Sidelnick, M.A., & Svoboda, M.L. (2000). The bridge between drawing and writing: Hannah's story. The Reading Teacher, 54, 174–184.

Vygotsky (1978) stated that children's drawings capitalize on the narrative impulse that emerges in their earliest representational drawings, on their tendency to create stories in drawings, and on the talk that surrounds and supplements drawing events. This talk allows teachers to engage the student in the literacy setting, and provides opportunities for questioning, directing, assessing, instructing, and praising the student.

 

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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