Small Moments for BIG Impact in Writings

In writing this past week, I wanted to focus on "small moments" for our writing.

Although, I thought my kids were heading in the right direction with their pieces, I just felt like their stories were missing something...

They were missing depth, heart, and voice. Most of my kiddos were still in the "here's my writing about a dog" stage and it was time to grow us up!
Now, if Lucy Calkins has told us ANYTHING about writing, it's that ideas are what spark us as authors. So, I did what any good teacher would do, I searched for a book that demonstrated how author's can write about one "small moment" and make a HUGE impact.
I found some great books,

check out more suggestions here.

But, I finally settled on "Roller Coaster" By Marla Frazee

Click the pic or here to check this out on Amazon.
Now, of course, I couldn't find the book for our actual lesson (I KNOW I HAD it... somewhere...) so, a quick search yielded this video reading of the story.

After reading, I mean watching, the book, we discussed what the author was writing about and how it wasn't some big and elaborate story, but something small and special to the author. We also discussed how the author made us feel as we were waiting to board that roller coaster. Good conversation to have people.
So, then we explored what we thought were small moments in our own personal lives that had special meaning to us.
We use this list sheet to help us stay organized.

Then, we choose our favorite "small moment"
The rest of the list we stowed away in our writing folders for safe keeping.
We used a bubble map to help spark some more details about our special moment.

Here's a peek at one of my kiddo's bubble map.

Then it was time to write! I like to use a formula when I teach writing (which you can read more about here) So, I had the kiddos organize their writings (just on a plain sheet of paper) using the sections of the formula.

Here's a better look on how the organization pieces could have looked if I had remembered to print out our sheets #teachermommybrain

Finally, we were ready to edit and give a final copy of our writings. Folks, can I just say... these were some of MY BEST writings I've had in my room. The details, voice, word choice. You could just tell they really cared about what they were writing about. They were telling a "small moments" special story and wanted them to be PURRFECT!

I had writings on playing a video game for the first time, to the birth of a baby brother. They were AMAZING! (and if I can find the photos I took of them... I will add them to this post! HMMMP!)
So the next time you need a lesson idea for improving your student's writing, I HIGHLY suggest going small for a BIG impact!
You can grab all my graphic organizers, papers, and rubrics I used here at my TpT store!

What are some ways you get your kids writing? Comment below!