Writing: Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day Stories

Recently, I had the pleasure of teaching a week long Young Readers and Writers class to a group of students that will be entering 1st and 2nd grade. The largest project that the students created that week was their very own version of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.
Pick up a copy of this great book here.

I know that many teachers do this activity with their students but I wanted to take it a bit further and get them  more involved in the editing, revising and publishing aspect of writing. Earlier on in the week we talked a lot about "juicy" words, or synonyms for overused words. Rachel Lynette has a wonderful resource for this on Teachers Pay Teachers. I suggest you check it out here,

My students absolutely loved using these posters to make their writing "juicier." By using this wonderful resource my students were able to come up with titles such as, Olivia and the Lousy, Awful, Not Good, Terrible Day, Melanie and the No Good, Awful, Miserable, Very Bad Day, Zijun and the Awful, Dreadful, Lousy, Very Bad Day, William and the No Good, Nasty, Bummer, Lousy Day, and Henley and the Awful, Terrible, Down in the Dumps, Miserable Day. 

They then brainstormed about some things that could happen to them to make their day terrible. I gave the students the choice of either drawing pictures or adding text about these horrible events. They could work on both at the same time if they chose but they must be done on a separate piece of paper to eliminate the need to redraw a picture or illustration because of the need to edit text. I then started a separate word document on my computer for each of my students and had them choose a font for their book. We discussed how different font styles often gives a text a different "feel" and "attitude." We looked at some literature out of our classroom library to give us some examples of this. After my students had come up with at least 5 upsetting events that could happened to them and created pictures to match their text, they chose some transition words to help their story flow from one event to the next. For a resource on transition words that's helpful to students, click here.

Students then typed in the text to their books, and printed out the pages. Then, they cut out and glued on the illustrations they had created to match the text. It just so happened that we are lucky enough to have color copier and that is what we used to create our final copies. We then bound our books with ribbon and staples. I am very happy with the way they turned out and the students were extremely proud to show off their published work. 

Here is Henley's published book, Henley and the Awful, Terrible, Down in the Dumps, Miserable Day.

Open publication - Free publishing - More awful

If you'd like to view my daily lesson plan document for the Young Readers and Writers I taught click here.