SOLSC Classroom Challenge

Classroom Slice of Life Story Challenge: Day 13 of 31

Anna Gratz Cockerille

Slice of Life_classroom image Black

It’s Day 13 Classroom Slicers!

On Monday, Stacey wrote a post about opening lines. She offers great advice for those wishing to get more from their opening lines.

Some of her tips:

OPENING LINES COULD…

  • Give readers a sense of character, place, and what’s going on.

  • Provide readers with a sense of closeness.

  • Make an honest declaration to the reader.

  • Draw the reader in by using the 1st person.

  • Talk to the reader in the 2nd person.

  • Give a sense of who the character is and where they live.

  • Tell everything the character is meaning to tell (without meaning to tell).

  • Establish a sense of voice that involves the reader, invites them in, welcomes them into the story, and makes seem curious about that world.

Today as you Slice, why not spend some time revising your opening lines?

Happy Slicing!

Useful Links:

Published by Anna Gratz Cockerille

Anna is a staff developer, literacy coach, and writer, based in New York City. She taught internationally in places such as Sydney, Australia; San Pedro Sula, Honduras, and Auckland, New Zealand in addition to New York before becoming a staff developer for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University (TCRWP). She has been an adjunct instructor in the Literacy Specialist Program at Teachers College, and teaches at TCRWP where she helps participants bring strong literacy instruction into their classrooms. Anna recently co-wrote Bringing History to Life with Lucy Calkins, part of the 2013 series Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing (Heinemann). She has been a researcher for Lucy Calkins, contributing especially to Pathways to the Common Core (Heinemann, 2012) and Navigating Nonfiction (Heinemann, 2010).

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