Welcome to Week 5 Meeting Tale Notes
The workshop today focused on words that create suspense and tension, adding to our meeting tale toolkit and co-constructing the ‘problem’ to our class story.
Specifically, the students:
– shared their own meeting tales in pairs
– Reviewed the class’ co-constructed story and the tools we had been looking at
– innovated sentences that used the ‘power of three’
– practiced using suspense words in their own sentences
– co-constructed the rest of the ‘build-up’ and the ‘problem’ for our class story
Class-constructed Meeting Tale
The brief opening:
Granny and the Clown
It was past midnight, one misty morning, when Granny thought she saw a strange looking clown.
Build up:
It was juggling banana in the back corner of grannies yard. At first, she noticed moving shadows. Then she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Finally, she heard strange laughing.
Granny opened her bedroom curtains slightly and peeked out. She saw a glimpse of a distorted red nose. On top of its head, big messy hair grew and a raggedy hat sat. She could see a scar on its pale haunted familiar face.
Granny froze, closed the curtains and slipped under her bed covers. The clown squeakily trudged by the window and the gate creaked and banged shut. When granny peered out the window again, the clown was gone.
The problem:
No one believed Granny! Her neighbour thought she’d gone koo koo. Her doctor laughed, and wanted her to seek help. Only Timmy, her grandson, believed her.
That cold winter week, they often saw the clown juggling town chickens and bananas, sleeping on the park benches or putting rotten bananas in people’s gardens. Everyone was complaining about the strange chuckling in the night. Fluffy white bunnies appeared on mass in the streets and circus props were left lying around the hospital grounds. The town’s people were going crazy with all of the strange happenings, dreading what else might happen.
Note: each week the creating process is quick paced. Sometimes, we settle for something not quite right and look to come back to it in the following lesson.
Home Tasks
- Write the problem for their own story. Use the boxing up as a guide, use the tools in the magpie journals to help – eg. sounds list, sentence openers, tool box tips and words/phrases that create suspense and tension. Remember the point of the ‘Problem’ – writing about some of the problems that are occurring because of your visitor. Use interesting phrases and write using the ‘power of three’.
- Add to their own Magpie journal any ‘words or phrases’ they collect. (pg. 29)
Other Resources
- Video of the Power of Three
- List of suspenseful words
