One of the biggest challenges for students struggling with creative writing is just getting started. In the year that I taught a ninth grade literature and writing course I can't count how many times a student would say to me, "I don't know what to write" or "I don't have any creative ideas." I wish that I had known then about TheStoryStarter.com. The Story Starter is a simple website that randomly generates story starting sentences. If you don't like the sentence generated for you, simply click the story starter button again for a different sentence.
Applications for Education
The Story Starter is a great tool for students that are stumped on starting a creative writing piece. They can click the story starter button as many times as they need until they find something that appeals to them. Sometimes teachers worry about the type of material a tool like this might generate, but in the 25+ times I clicked the story starter button I did not find anything even marginally questionable.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Creative Writing Help
Posted by
Mr. Byrne
at
10:04 AM
Labels: Creative Writing, Teaching With Technology, Technology Integration, The Story Starter
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5 comments:
Thanks, Richard. I've added this site to this LIM wiki page:
Idea Generators
http://learninginmaineresources.wikispaces.com/Idea+Generators
Another source of prompts:
Writing Prompts
http://learninginmaineresources.wikispaces.com/Writing%20Prompts
Jim Burke
http://www.learninginmaine.com
Hi Jim,
Thanks for adding it to the LIM Wiki. Hope your summer is going well.
Richard
The sentences generated by The Story Starter have carefully been made to be G rated. There are no naughty words in any of the more than 300 million possible sentences.
Joel Heffner
www.thestorystarter.com
Joel,
Thank you for your comments. As you know, being G- rated is critical to the successful inclusion of web-resources in the classroom.
Richard
Here is a free source a little bit more elaborate than The Story Starter, but more aimed at a brief writing exercise more than a short story or essay. Its grade range is K (with help of course) to probably 3rd or early 4th (though they say 4-6). It is called Story Starter
teacher.scholastic.com/activities/storystarters/storystarter1.htm
My 3rd graders like it.
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