Pies, Pies, Pies!

Last week I spent some time with the 4th grade at Echo Lake Elementary and it was so much fun. We split it into 2 groups to be a little more time efficient and with each group I went over some basics of writing and creating. We brainstormed and then outlined and I took the ideas that we put together and actually formulated them into stories. The two groups were very different in approach and overall tone surprisingly, but they were very similar in their themes. Each of their main ideas were centered around pies! It was so funny when I started to brainstorm with the second group and they started to shout out nouns and adjectives -they were so similar. They wanted the center of the story to be about a pie, they wanted it to involve a potato and a monkey!! I kind of tweaked the ideas a little so they would lead in different directions. One story was called "Contest on Pie Planet" about friends who attend a pie eating contest on Mars which is hosted by a mutant. They have to eat their way off of the planet after the contest leads to a food fight started by the mutant! They are able to find their way to a clearing to "jump off" of the planet and land back on earth. The other story is called "Oh My Pie!" It is about two friends who do everything together and have a garden together as well. They discover a giant pie growing in their garden one day and decide to water it with hot sauce. The pie is enormous, they dig in and instead of the pie getting smaller -they do! The spicy pie (they soon discover) gives them the ability to breathe fire and melt the remaining pie and they go back to normal size. I added a little twist to the end of each of them when I wrote it for the classes to have -but that will be between the classes and I :)...
It was so much fun to brainstorm with the students - especially the ones who were really into it. It is kind of tough to stay focused (for me anyway) when I would see some students who thought I was the most boring person in the universe - but that was definitely not the norm amongst this group. I'm going back this week to do some one on one editing with the students on their own pieces. I am really looking forward to it. I would post a picture but I need to clear permission first!