A big shout out to Erica in Canada who attended our Narrative Workshop earlier this year and wanted to share a main event lesson and activity that she did with her third graders. It was so much fun and the students were so excited about the writing they had created together.
They started by talking about the difference between summary statements and stretched out, elaborated main events. Then we watched a
movie clip from Eddie the Eagle (Eddie's final ski jump which is packed full of emotion, suspense, and excitement). They talked about how a ski jump like this normally takes just a few seconds but the movie writers turned it into a 2-minute clip in order to show everything.
They then took the clip and watched it a few seconds at a time talking about the action, what we see in the scene (description), the thoughts and feelings we think they were trying to show, and the dialogue. Using this we wrote a main event that matched up with the video.
I've included pictures of their writing to show you. It was a super engaging way to introduce students to this idea of telling something in slow motion. I hope you enjoy and thanks again for sharing! Please send us more of the great things you are doing!
LOOK AT THIS MODELING!!!!!
IT MAKES ME SO EXCITED!
Student sample: