Motivation And Inspiration - A Plan For The English Lesson (Short Story Writing)

(View image source)

Hello once again my fellow Steemit educators! This is another lesson plan for the last grades of Primary School. Today we 're dealing with story writing, art (cinema) and motivation. 

OBJECTIVES

We want our students to get inspiration and motivation in pursuing their dreams and interests, but we want to get them involved in writing. We also want them to be able to discuss the plot and characters of a film.

TIME NEEDED

I believe that the project will take approximately 5 hours (3 hours for steps 1-2 and another 2 hours for steps 3-5), so I guess we can complete it within 2 day's time or maybe leave the final step for a third day.

STEP 1

Explore your students likes:
First we may have a conversation in the classroom where all the students talk about their favorite activities and what are their plans for the future. Yes, the cliche question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" applies here.

STEP 2

An audio-visual stimulus:
It's a great idea to watch the movie "Billy Elliot" (imdb.com). In this movie a boy secretly takes up ballet classes. His family at first does not approve, but Billy keeps pursuing his dream and takes advantage of his talent in dancing to grow up and be a successful ballet-dancer.

(View image source)

After we have watched the movie we discuss a little further. Some good questions would be:
-What did Billy's father want him to learn?
-Why do you think he pushed Billy to take boxing-classes?
-Why did he get angry at Billy when he found out about the ballet classes?
-Do you believe his father was a bad person?
-Why do you think Billy wanted to do ballet-dancing?
-How did his father change his mind on Billy's hobby?
-What happened in the end?
-Do you believe it was fair of his father to forbid Billy to keep attending ballet classes?
-How do you feel about Billy in the end of the movie?
-Do you believe that it's right to go after our interests, especially when we're good at them?
-How important is it to have your family and friends' support in this?

During this discussion, we want to make our children understand that they must not be afraid to go after the things they like and they're good at, especially when we don't harm other people's freedom and rights. Let the students think, wonder and understand that they're the ones responsible for their future and sometimes they need to persist for the things they love. 

STEP 3

Inspiration for a short story:
In this part we want the students to get inspiration and ideas before they write their own short story. I believe that a spider I read about on one of @trumpman's articles would be a great inspiration. When I first read this article about Cebrennus rechenbergi - The spider that wanted to be a gymnast I immediately thought it would make a great character for a children's story. 

(View image source)

First let me tell you a few words about this "flic flac" spider, as @trumpman says in his post:

 "Much like a gymnast, it first runs for a short time to build momentum, propels itself off the ground and continues with a series of rapid flic-flac jumps. Unlike the golden rolling spider it doesn't matter if it's uphill, downhill or on level ground. The Moroccan flic-flac spider flic-flacs every ground with ease!"

We don't want to go further on details about the insect, we only want to give a short description to our students and show them a video to get inspiration for their story.

This video from youtube would be perfect:

STEP 4

Write the story:
After we've talked a little about this weird spider with the amazing moves we try to give our students a beginning* for their stories. 

"There once was a spider that was really good at gymnastics. It wanted to become a gymnast one day and take part in tournaments and competitions all over the world. It was going to be a great athlete and everybody would love him!

He never stood still, wherever he went he demonstrated his amazing moves and told everyone that he wanted to become a gymnast. Nobody seem to take him seriously. All the other spiders laughed at him and said that he was never going to make it.

The poor spider was really sad and disappointed. What if they were right? What if he should give it up and live a normal spider-life like any other spider he knew?"

*This is a beginning I wrote for the activity.

From this point on it's up to the students to continue the story on their own. It can end up a succes- or failure-story, the students are free to choose how their character ends up.

STEP 5

When the class is done, we get to read all the stories and decide on which ones are the 3 the best to be pinned on a "Story-Spot-Poster" in the classroom. 

Extra step:
The spider's story could become a great play for the students to put on. That way we would get them involved in organizing a school play and have them go through all the stages needed for a successful show.

 

Thank you for reading this post! I hope some of you will find it interesting and helpful. If any of you tries it with your class, I'd be happy to know how it worked out, so leave a comment anytime! Also, any feedback is welcome, as it helps me improve my work. 

You are more than welcome to check my profile, @ruth-girl, you may find interesting educational stuff there like my series of posts on bizarre natural phenomena or various lesson plans. 

And for those engaging with education, @steemiteducation is here to join all steemian educators in their common cause of making our job easier, more effective and more fun! 

Thank you for your time and as I like to say, 

Steem on and keep smiling, people! :)