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Feb. 4, 2009 - Story Builders 1
Story Builders is a unique program developed by Write Shop. This month I had the opportunity to try out People StoryBuilders. In People StoryBuilders, there are two sets of word cards. The first set is printed in black letters, in case you want to print it out on specific colored papers; the second set is words printed in color letters, if you want to print them out on white paper. All I had was white paper, so I used the second set of word cards.
The word cards are broken up into four types of words (or groups of words). Each type of words is correlated with a different color. For example, Character Cards (or subject cards) are on blue cards or paper, or printed in blue letters; Character Trait Cards (or adjective cards) are on salmon cards/paper or printed in salmon (amber/yellow) letters; Setting Cards are on green cards/paper or in green letters; and Plot Cards are on lavendar cards/paper or in lavendar/purple letters.
Write Shop then gives easy-to-follow guidelines for helping your student begin learning to write. For instance, you might start by selecting, yourself, the subject and plot cards, and then ask your child to write a sentence using the words you are providing. It might end up being a sentence like, "The fireman climbed a tall mountain." There are many ways suggested for determining cards to use. Keeping the four card types separated, you can random draw from each stack, or toss the dice and select 1 to 6 from each stack and pick which one you want, or mom can just pick. I thought of another possibility... You could play a game where you and all the kids sit around the table, like when you play a card game, and as each person's turn comes up, select one to four cards (decide in advance or let the child decide how many they want to select), and make a sentence from the card(s) you drew.
More ideas for how to use the cards included a "Round Robin" game where you set the timer for 2-3 minutes, and each person writes something using the cards they drew or were given, and then each person passes their writing to the person to their right or left to read out loud. Or, you can assign the student to write poetry using the Story Builders cards.
The parent/teacher is reminded that, while the writing assignments can be graded, if grades are required for portfolio review or something, it is also good to give the student times when he/she can write just for the pure fun, love, and joy of writing.
Products like this are good, in my opinion, for getting the creative juices flowing. Also, products like this, with the instructions and ideas they are giving, are good for helping the parent/teacher to keep things fresh, to think outside the box, to work to make learning fun for the student.
Story Builders gets two thumbs up in my review. From my son it gets a one up and two down. (Okay, he just doesn't like any schoolwork at all. He'd rather have a shovel and a hole to dig...)
Just for fun, I recorded a real-life in-homeschool event of using Story Builders. Here is how it went.
We finally cut up the word cards and started making stories. My student was a little reluctant to work today, so I asked him to pick one story card per card-type for me, and I would create the first little story. So, here's my first effort:
The rude mountain climber left the ski lodge in a huff. He was angry. He decided to climb the tallest mountain he could find. He started hiking up a very tall mountain, many miles from the lodge. When he finally got to the top, he found that his mountain was actually a volcano. Coming over the top ridge quite suddenly, he falls into a deep hole. As you can imagine, this was actually the center of the volcano. Fortunately, the volcano was not active, and he was able to climb his way out.
The end
My son's then went on to write a story as well.
Here is the information on how to buy WriteShop People StoryBuilders:
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Posted by 
Vickie (www.TumbleweedNews.blogspot.com)