Question+5

How do students discover the inside story?

This comes from mentor texts....I have it, should you want to borrow. Some internet scouting would work as well.

Megan Nelson Most writers rely on their personal experiences to guide them in their writing pieces. Throughout their lives, writers have encountered numerous people, places, events, and objects, which generate many lasting emotional responses and strong memories inside of them. Writers can create their pieces around these "inside" stories. The inside stories are the stories that only the writers know and can write. If writers know their own writing territories, which are the lists of the people, places, events, and objects in their lives, they will be able to discover and write the stories inside these territories. For example, my list of writing territories would include my husband, parents, other family members, special holidays, summer fun, friends, my wedding, pets, sports, turtles, and the Junior Olympics. I can choose one of these topics, recall the details, and write my inside story.

Elyce Rickerl How do students discover the inside story? Using mentor texts is essential to helping students discover the "inside story" of writing. Like professional authors, all students have writing territories that need to be explored. Students can be guided to see how this is true when teachers use the author’s note or biography section of a story. Authors often reveal the “seed for an idea that was plucked from a larger territory.” Teachers can introduce students to the inside story by discussing the lives of authors with them. Reading biological excerpts about authors before examining their works shows students just how much the “famous” writers draw from personal experience. These are stories that only the authors know well enough to tell. The same is true of all of us; we have people, places, and experiences that are our own. Elyce Rickerl