[andiyougoonie]

I am looking for some new ideas for making a wall story with my class. The trouble is, I googled wall story and nothing came up. What I know it as is when you take a familiar poem or short story and have the students fill in some blanks with their own words and then do an art piece to go with it (I teach first). For example, we read the book "Mary Wore Her Red Dress", then the kids wrote their own version and it looked like this: ________ wore her
yellow boots, yellow boots, yellow boots,
_____ wore her yellow boots all day long.

(They got to choose their own color word and clothing item as well as adding in their own name).
I have always called these wall stories. That must not be the official term. Can anybody help me out? Or even better, does anybody have some wall stories for November they can post??

Thanks for the help!

[Diahn]

We first learned about wall stories when we went to full-day/all day K for every child in our district and received training from a wonderful teacher, Darla Wood-Walters. It was one of the components of our literacy program and AMAZING at helping the kids learn snappy (high frequency) words, chunks, and other text features.

When I get to school tomorrow I'll send you a few wall stories I've used in November.

[Diahn]

And, you're right, it is derived from a familiar shared reading poem/song or big book. The connection kids make to the familiarity aids them in their "new" learning in the wall story. Soooooo much learning is "pulled" out of the wall stories....it's most beneficial with the snappy words. The kids really learn them! And, their learning actually transfers to their writing!

[museumuse]

Did you try that phrase?

[rth2008]

is what i have heard them as before. mad libs are fun too. you can take a familiar poem/story and make you own mad lib out of it. put blanks in for the words that you want to replace.

these would be great for grammar lessons to later on in the year. just have students replace different parts of the poem for the grammar point (verb, adjective, noun, etc) you are focusing on.

[Bertie]

I took several classes from her, I'm glad to hear she's still out there spreading around her wonderful ideas. I think she also calls them "Innovations" Perhaps "class made stories" would help google. By the way, Bert and Ernie are on the google logo today.

[cactus67]

How about interactive charts? I think Scholastic has a book for them.

[luvmycat]

When I see this I think of familiar story frames.