Story Writing : Planning activity for students

This activity is a tremendous visual for students who can't seem to get the concept of organization and planning for and writing of their papers.


Gentlemen, Start Your Monkeys!
The idea is to be able to read an entire composition with continuous flow, free of unnatural breaks, gaps or holes in the writing.
Purchase three or four of the "Barrel of Monkeys" games and assign them to one of your students to manage as the papers are being read.
As long as the ideas are flowing well, with effective movement from sentence to sentence, and from idea to idea, a monkey gets added to the chain. (one per sentence)
If however, there is a break in the flow, or smoothness of the paper; if there are weak, ineffective transitions, a break in the story line occurs. Thus, the chain of monkeys stops there, and a new chain begins. This chain can continue until the story is complete or there is another break in the action.
Of course, at the beginning of the year there will be many breaks in the flow, but as your students gradually begin to notice where these breaks are and recognize them on their own, the number of chains will get lower and the length of each chain will get longer. By the end of the school year, most students will be able to write an entire paper with one continuous flow and very few breaks in the chain.
So, tell your students to "Start Your Monkeys!" and watch them have fun improving their story planning and organization.