Brooke Byrd

EDU 5021

8 in 1 Lesson

10/16/2010

Subject Area: Elementary Reading

Topic: Creative story writing
Lesson Objectives: The students will be able to write a scene for their novel using
details and feeling.
Supplies/Materials: Student Handbooks for planning, CD with various instrumental
music, clay.
Room Arrangement: Open spaces for movement activities, groups of tables for
cooperative activities, individual space for writing silently

MI Verbal/Linguistic
Tool: Creative Writing
Capacity: Understanding the order and meaning of words
Activity: In a few short weeks, you will be writing the actual chapters of your novel.
Today we are going to plan writing with more emotion and feeling. Write now one
paragraph of the story you will be writing more of next month.

The lesson is naturally Verbal/Linguistic, as it leads students into the more

extensive writing they will do as part of National Novel Writing Month in November.
Novel writing, as well as the Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence, “is related to words and
language” (Lazear. pg 7)

MI: Interpersonal
Tool: Receiving Feedback
Capacity: Working Cooperatively in a group
Activity: Read aloud a page of your written work to you group. Group will give
feedback, taking turns.

Lazear said this intelligence has “person-to-person relationships and

communication” (pg. 7), which working with peers to reviewing the already written work
involves heavily.
MI: Musical/Rhythmic
Tool: Instrumental Sounds
Capacity: Sensitivity to Sound
Activity: Different instrumental songs will play for five minutes at a time. During that
time, write an exciting even in your story, stopping for a break every time the music
stops. At the end, see if your style changed with each song.

Music can touch us in ways we don’t always understand. Having the children
reflect on the differences in what they wrote during each style of song will exercise their
sensitivity to music and the way it makes us feel. It also deals with environmental
sounds in the backround, as Lazear mentions as a part of this intelligence (pg 7).

MI: Intrapersonal
Tool: Emotional Processing
Capacity: Awareness and expression of different feelings.
Activity: Write some dialogue for your characters. Create three different settings for the
same dialogue (gloomy, in the middle of the day, in a library, etc). Tell how it felt to write
a scary scene, a happy scene, or a funny scene.

Intrapersonal Intelligence is more than simply working alone, but also having “self
reflection, metacognition…and awareness of spiritual realities” (pg 7). This activity
strives to let the student think about why they felt differently while writing scenes with a
different purpose.

MI Bodily/Kinesthetic
Tool: Role Playing
Capacity: Miming abilities
Activity: Act out a scene from your story, without using any sounds. Your group must
guess what is happening.

“Wisdom of the body” (Lazear, pg 7) struck me as lending itself to this activity. In

order to act out a scene with no sounds involves control of the body.
MI Visual/Spatial
Tool: Sculpting
Capacity: Graphic Representation
Activity: Make a model of your main character, villain, and supporting character. How
can you tell from a distance which character they are?

The more times a person comes in contact with something, the better they learn
it. In order to write interesting novels in November, students must become very close to
their characters. Having the ability “to visualize an object” (Lazear, pg 7) helps the
students connect with their characters. It is fun to see that your main character that you
created out of your own mind, is standing on the table in sculpted form, ready to take on
anything you can throw at it. Using the Visual/Spatial Intelligence helps bring the
characters alive.

Mi: Naturalist/Observer
Tool: Sensory Stimulation Exercises
Capacity:
Activity: Describe a person your main character has just met, using your five senses
(Taste, touch, sight, hearing and smell).

The Naturalist Intelligence is known for the keen understanding and love of
nature (Lazear pg 7). By writing with each of the senses that they use to experience and
observe the natural world around them, students will help to visualize the world they
have created.

MI: Logical/Mathematical
Tool: Calculation
Capacity: Performing Complex Calculations
Activity: Knowing that there are 30 days in the month of November, and the class word
count goal is 50,000 words total, find how many words each student must reach per
day, and how many the class as a whole should reach.

This activity not only lets the students work through a problem solving situation, it
also involves them in their own novel writing adventure. If I right away put the answer up
on the board, the students would feel less ownership of the challenge. The students will
use their numbers skills all month as they count how many words they have
accomplished and how many left to reach their daily goal.