A Work in Progress

My students work quite a bit on writing fiction, so I wanted to work on writing a bit of fiction with my students.

A Work in Progress:

The washing machine thundered as the clothes spun like a tornado. Curious, the kitten poked his head through the kitty door and slunk down the stairs into the laundry room. THUMP! BUMP! The kitten ducked his head and spread himself as flat as a pancake against the base of the stair. He was sure no one could see him. He felt like a lion camouflaged in the tall grass of the savannah. Keeping low to the floor, he slid over the edge of stair, moving slowly and precisely one stair at a time to the bottom of the steps. The washing machine's window showed clothes tumbling and suds bubbling. The kitten crouched below the window and watched. He waited. His whiskers pulled forward; his pupils grew, the black, opening wide. He continued watching, waiting for the right time. He squatted on his haunches, shook his rear, and pounced - BAM! He ran right into the glass. The kitten seemed dazed as he fell backwards. Shaking his head back and forth, he cleared his mind and refocused. Around and around - the clothes were beckoning him. He pounced again.

Teachers Write! July 10 - Voice

Today is Friday Feedback for Teachers Write! with Gae Polisner but I thought I'd post here, too. We also had a lesson on trying to work voice into our writing. The author was encouraging us to add humor to our writing by using similes and metaphors or something unexpected. I think I'm going to have to continue to work on that because I sat kind of stumped. I will keep this lesson in mind as I continue to write, so what I did do was try to add some similes  and strong verbs (I call the vivid verbs with my kiddos) into my writing because that's something I ask my students to do. I figured that if I ask them to do it, I'd better put myself in their shoes and see if I could do it. It's tough, this writing thing!

Here goes...

This is my character description from yesterday. We were asked to write about what our character loves.

Molly loves to swim the most. She is like a fish - that's what her mom says. If there's water, she's in it. She will swim all day if she gets the chance. Sometimes it's hard though because none of her friends like it as much as she does, so she runs out of swimming buddies. It's a good thing her mom and Granny love to swim. They'll always swim with her.

Revised description:

Molly took to the water like a fish to swimming. She had a powerful affinity to the water, wanting to swim all day. Sometimes her friends would want to play on the beach in the sand, building castles and animal statues. That was okay with Molly to do for a bit, but the water called to her like sirens of the sea. She couldn't stay out for long resist the temptation. She would charge back into the clear lake like a tank in battle and belly flop causing a tsunami of tides. She gazed across the lake, the water glistening like a mirror, and charged into the water like a tank in battle, belly-flopping, causing a tsunami in her wake.

We'll see what tomorrow's writing brings:)

Teachers Write! July 9

For our writing lesson today, we were to take one of our characters and work on voice. In order to do that, our guest mentor asked us to think about some questions related to the character and write answering these questions for a certain time period - like 2 minutes or 4 minutes, etc. What I'm posting here is about another character that enter the room where the main character, Molly, is currently.

Excerpt from today:

Molly's grandmother came into the room to see if everyone was ready for lunch. She loves to feed people; this is her way of taking of those she cares about and nurturing them. Granny is smart and so kind. She's Molly's favorite. Molly looks similar to Granny. Molly has always thought Granny was beautiful. She has brown hair, but when you look closely at it, which Molly does often because she loves "doing" Granny's hair, it is actually made up of all different colors. She has red, brown, black, blonde and some gray, though Molly doesn't think Granny will ever go completely gray - she has WAY too much hair. Even though Granny is only five years younger than Grandaddy, she looks twenty years younger. She has beautiful, wrinkle-free skin. Her eyes are funny. Sometimes they are blue. Sometimes they are green. Sometimes they are gray. It is dependent on her mood.