Planning Your Story

Students will:

• Be able to create a short story with a beginning, middle and end.
• Be able to map out the story ahead of time. 
• Understand the mind mapping process.
• Be able to explain to others the three parts using the mind map. 

Vocabulary Words:

1. Brainstorming: Brainstorming is creative thinking to come up with new ideas. 
2. Mind Mapping: A graphic or picture to show and organize ideas. 

To prepare for this lesson:

• There are several very good sites for students to use to learn how to mind map their story ideas. Visit the two below and decide which one would work best for your students. 

  • MindMup - MindMup is a mind-mapping creation tool that lets you create unlimited mind maps. Everything you create on MindMup is stored online for you to access anytime, anywhere and across different devices. 

  • Popplet - (Popplet is no longer free but you can create one Popplet and reuse it) Popplet is an extremely easy to use mind mapping tool for the PC and iPad. Students can easily add text, images, videos, color and move the Popples around the screen. Watch the video tutorial to see how easy it is! Students will need individual accounts for Popplet. 

    • One thing you may notice is that the popples will have the student name on every popple. Since Popplet is a collaborative tool this lets the teacher know which student created the popple if they are collaborating together on a project. To turn this feature off go to Settings (the blue wheel)> View>hide nametags. 

See the Accommodations Page and Charts on the 21things4students website in the Teacher Resources. 

Directions for this activity:

1. Tell the students they will be brainstorming a short story with a beginning. middle and end. 
2. Students will use MindMup or Popplet to create a mind map to organize their story. 
3. Students will need to create four or more bubbles to put their ideas in. 
4. Students can create a main bubble with the title of the story and or the main idea. From that bubble, they can create bubbles to indicate what should occur in the beginning, middle and end of the story. 
   1. Beginning - Who are the characters and what is the setting?
   2. Middle - What happens to the characters?
   3. End - How are the characters different than they were at the beginning of the story?

Different options for assessing the students:

• Observations
• Check for understanding
• The teacher can have the students print their mind maps. 
• The students can share with a writing partner their story and get peer feedback on their mind map. 
• Teachers can use a short rubric to determine if students have accomplished mapping out the beginning, middle and end of the story.