Year 4’s SPAG Story Transformation class
Well, first there are the words. Stories need adjectives, lots of rich and juicy adjectives. Similes play a role here too.
Then there are the right verbs. Students had to choose better verbs – why say “went” when you can say “fled”, or “tiptoed away”? Why say “the shark ate one of the oars of the boat”, when “chomped” sounds so much better?
Then there are adverbs, to say how, when or where the action occurred. Adverbs also give clarity to the story, so the reader does not get lost, bored, and disengage. Who likes to tell or write a story, only to see the listener or reader’s eyes start to glaze over?
Then there are subordinate conjunctions. It sounds technical, but it simply means that students learn how to write longer, more complex sentences, fitting with their age. Our Year 4 students now know perfectly well how to use conjunctions, connective words and how to write like champions!
Thank goodness for online interactive tools like the one we used today! The students enjoy grammar lessons through story writing, when there is interaction with a fun, game-like writing activity and a friendly voice telling the children that their choices are making the comic story worthy of publication .
In this activity, students also chose the ending. For SPAG class, it was a short and sweet one, but we extended this activity later in the day during Creative Writing class. There, the students had to come up with an extended version of the ending they chose during SPAG class. They had to use all the tools and devices that they learned in the earlier class, making sure their writing was rich with adjectives, adverbs, connective words, similes and metaphors, and lots more!
