Are you tired of hearing, “I don’t know what to write about!” from your students? Coming up with ideas for a story can be a huge road block for children and the cause of major anxiety and frustration during writing time. When they say they do not know what to write about, they are probably being honest and not just giving you an excuse. So, how can we give our students the support and tools they need?
Story Starters
Whether your class is working on a narrative fiction unit during Writing Workshop or just coming up with a fun story for independent writing time, story starters may be the key to unlocking your students’ creativity.
Story starters provide students with the important elements of a story: the characters, setting, and problem. Having a basic framework to work with, students can map out their ideas and start growing their stories. With a little cultivation, students will use their imagination and their stories will naturally come alive. They can move past the challenge of not having anything to write about and JUST. START. WRITING. More importantly, they will gain confidence in themselves as writers and may even surprise themselves with the stories they can write!
Roll-a-Story Writing Activity
Yes, you could just give the students suggestions for different story elements during a writing conference, but what if the students could come up with story starters independently? Even better, what if it could be engaging and FUN?!
With Roll-a-Story writing, students use story templates and a dice to roll the character, setting, and problem. In less than five minutes, the basic components of your students’ stories will be decided, and all they will have to worry about is getting their ideas onto paper. These story starters are the perfect tool for helping students become writers!
Roll-a-Story Benefits
It can be stressful to fit everything into the year, but roll-a-story writing is a valuable activity with many benefits. Think of all the standards you can address! Students will learn about narrative story structure and can apply various writing skills. They can even practice their oral reading fluency if they read their stories aloud to a parter or to the whole class. As an added bonus, roll-a-story writing can be silly and fun, so students wonโt even realize how much they’re learning. Just think of the stories that may result!
Story Starters for the Whole Year
Roll-a-Dice writing templates are the perfect resource for any classroom; however, you should be warned… once students use the Roll-a-Story templates for the first time, they will most likely ask for them again and again. Perhaps it’s the anticipation or the silliness of some of the starters, but students just love rolling the dice to find out what their story starter will be. Lucky for you, I have Roll-a-Story templates for the entire year!
The Roll-a-Story resources are broken down by month in order to incorporate different seasons and holidays, but everyday themes are included, as well. For example, in March, students can write a St. Patrick’s Day-themed story or they can write about an animal living in the desert.
There are four story starter pages within each monthly resource, but how you use them is completely up to you. You can use all the templates throughout the month, assigning students a new template each week, or you can give your students choice at the beginning of the month and have them choose a template that matches their writing interests. Either way, the Roll-a-Story templates will be sure to jump-start silly and fun stories.
These templates are perfect for writing centers and for independent writing time. If you’re teaching remotely, you can even assign Roll-a-Story writing for your virtual learners to complete. All you would need to do is upload the PDF template to Google Classroom or SeeSaw and then share a link to some digital dice!
Free Roll-a-Story Sample
Want a sample copy of my Roll-a-Story activity? Complete the form below or download the resource from the MsJordanReads resource library (subscribers only). If your students end up loving these Roll-a-Story templates as much as my students do, youโll want to check out the complete 12-month bundle!
Students LOVE dice activities, so be sure to go back and read my previous Roll-a-Dice Literacy Fun post for additional ways to incorporate dice activities in the classroom for literacy (and some more free resources to add to your literacy toolbox!).
