The Story of Things: Part 3

The Story of Things: Part 3

When I am teaching argumentation, the kids and I talk about the facts we pull from articles and how to cite those quotes. We then turn to anecdotal evidence. The kids are usually confused by the term “anecdotal”, and they often ask what it means.

Simply put, an anecdote is a personal experience told in the form of a brief story. They are often humorous, are fun to write, and are a great way to entice kids to share their writing. When we write one, I have the kids start by making a list of things that happened to them that they think are funny.

These are usually related to one of these situations:

-          the first time something was tried

-          the time something was scary, but then wasn’t

-          the thing that was supposed to work, but didn’t

-          the thing that should not have happened, but did

-          the thing you were supposed to love, but wound up hating

Last year, one of my students wrote about his first experience eating dried and salted nori. Nori is a delicious dried seaweed covered with tasty salt. A little goes a long way for most people. My student decided to eat the entire COSTCO container of nori, just before his swim lesson.

Everything was fine at first, but then the chlorine smell began to affect him. He felt nauseated, and then became ill in the pool. He laughed so hard he was hiccupping as he told the story. Apparently, he cleared the pool in a matter of seconds.

When a student writes a personal narrative like that, he or she is usually very excited to share the piece. As the teacher, it is important to let them do that even if the aesthetic of the story is less than pleasant. The story writer can be guided at a later time to select a story for classroom publishing that isn’t as vivid as bright green vomit islands floating in a pool.

The time is perfect, however, for talking about creating a fictional character. A main character in a story could have that incident happen, and it could be tragic or hilarious based on the character created.

Next time, we’ll look at creating realistic characters based on human behavior. 

Keywords: character, cartoon, traits, writing, writing sprints, character traits, students