"Time Travel with Historical Fiction Writing"
Reading historical fiction provides a compelling way for students to learn about different time periods. This lesson plan will ask students to write their own short historical fiction story, using details about a historical period that they learn in a Social Studies unit.
Objectives
Students will:
-Identify key terms for a historical period
-Identify the five elements of a short story
-Incorporate the five elements of a short story into their writing
-Write a story that is set in a historical period
Materials
-Flocabulary Social Studies video
-Flocabulary Fiction v. Non-fiction video
-Flocabulary Five Elements of a Short Story video
Time
2-3 Class periods
Sequence
1. After you have finished a unit on a historical period, ask students to make a list of all the key terms they can remember: people, places, ideas that were important to that time period. Explain that students are going to use the details to create a short historical fiction story.
2. Ask students to define historical fiction, and have them share examples that they have read before. If they have never read historical fiction before, you may want to use Flocabulary's Fiction v. Non-Fiction video to talk about how historical fiction can be tricky, because it has a lot of real details even though they story is not real.
3. Review the Five Elements of a Short Story, with the Flocabulary video "Five Things."
4. Give students time to plan out their short story. The only constraint is that the story much be set in the historical period you're studying. It is up to students to create characters, plot and conflict. Students should indicate which key terms they will use to show that their story is set during that time period.
5. Give students a period (or more) to write their stories. When finished, they can read or tell their stories to their classmates.
Extension / Wrap Up
If students want an extra challenge, they can try to tell their story in rhyme using Flocabulary's Writing Academic Rhymes lesson sequence.
At the end of the year, you can have students use their historical fiction stories to help review historical periods from the year. These stories can serve as strong mnemonic tool, since kids will remember what their characters did and where they lived, and the setting is history!