Thursday, March 4, 2010

From the Pens of Third Graders

Asked my students to complete the following sentence:

Good stories have...


They said:

Action
Scary parts
Funny parts
Battles
Big problems
Evil characters
Great pictures
Weird parts
Mean characters
No run-on sentences (I'd be in trouble)
Paragraphs
Surprise endings
A great lead
Excitement
Showing, not telling
Good verbs
Dialogue that sounds real
Similes (I had to provide the word. The student gave me the example: "Her face was red as a tomato.")
Description
Exciting Ending
Kissing (Don't even ask.)
Serious problems to solve
A lesson a character learns
Violence
Adventure
Zooming in on an important subject
Robots (hell yes!)
Aliens (same kid. I want to read more of his work.)
Interesting settings
Lots of dialogue (Agreed.)
Funny characters
Interesting characters
Endings that make you feel something (other than disappointment, I presume)


So now you know.

14 comments:

Sarah Dooley said...

Great list!

I'm going to pose that question to my third-graders tomorrow.

chris said...

Weird parts


Good, I'm covered.

Jonathon Arntson said...

Zooming in on inanimate objects...

word ver. cones

CONES.

Anita said...

Very cool!

Kelly Polark said...

Great brainstorming, third graders!
Do you have a list of their favorite books? Just curious.

Unknown said...

Uh-no farts?

Maybe that falls under weird parts or something related.

Paul Michael Murphy said...

Farts fall under funny parts, every single time, without fail.

I don't have an official list of their favorite books, but I know that the Wimpy Kid books, the Capt. Underpants books, Junie B. Jones, and anything to do with Pokemon (still) and Star Wars (even more still) are always being read in my room.

Laura Pauling said...

I think that pretty much covers it all!

Unknown said...

BTW - The Phantom Tollbooth is an unbelievable book and Norton Jester came to our school two years ago. He's awesome.

Unknown said...

"Juster"

Anita said...

I want to go to Tracy's school.

"judge"

Heather Kelly said...

Tracy--My son loved that book. I keep meaning to pick it up...

Myra McEntire said...

Third graders are GENIUS ALL AROUND.

TerryLynnJohnson said...

What a list! And your little comments seasoned it with funny.