Writing

Let’s look at an example of a picture and caption for the middle of a story. Let’s turn this picture and caption into the second paragraph of the story.

Do you remember Traffic Light paragraphs? We will use the green light, yellow light, and red light to help us with writing a great middle paragraph, too.

Let’s start with a green light sentence. Do you remember that a green light sentence is your topic sentence? That means the first sentence will be describing what your second paragraph is about. So let’s use the example story to write the first sentence.

Let’s think back to the first paragraph of this story. That will also help us write the first sentence in the middle of this story.

Mamma duck and her babies are swimming in the pond. They are swimming in a nice blue pond. Mamma duck keeps a close eye on her ducklings. Mamma duck loves to take her ducklings for swims.

Now that we remember the beginning of this story, it is time to write the middle part of the story. Let’s look back to what happens in the middle of this story. "A baby duck is missing." That is what happens in the middle of this story. So we need to come up with a topic sentence, or a green light sentence, describing what is happening in the middle of this story. Let’s try this sentence:

Even though Mamma duck kept a close eye on her ducklings, one is still missing!

Yay! We have our topic sentence written for the middle part of our story.

Now it is time to slow down and write our yellow light sentences. These are your detail sentences. Let’s try these sentences:

Mamma Duck was very scared and upset that one of her ducklings was missing. Mamma Duck and her other ducklings looked high and low for the missing duckling.

Yay! We have slowed down and added some nice details to the middle of our story.

Do you remember what kind of sentence we need to write now? It is the last sentence, and it is called the concluding sentence, or the red light sentence. We need to stop, or end, the paragraph now with the concluding sentence. Remember, concluding sentences are very similar to our topic sentences, but just put into different words. Let’s try this sentence:

Mamma Duck and her ducklings keep searching for the missing duck, but they still cannot find him.

Yay! We have stopped and written a great concluding sentence.

Let’s look at the beginning and middle of the story all together now. Pay close attention to the second paragraph since that is what you will be working on this week.

Mamma duck and her babies are swimming in the pond. They are swimming in a nice blue pond. Mamma duck keeps a close eye on her ducklings. Mamma duck loves to take her ducklings for swims.

Even though Mamma duck kept a close eye on her ducklings, one is still missing! Mamma Duck was very scared and upset that one of her ducklings was missing. Mamma Duck and her other ducklings looked high and low for the missing duckling. Mamma Duck and her ducklings keep searching for the missing duck, but they still cannot find him.

Great work!

We did it! We wrote the middle paragraph of our sample story. Before you begin writing your middle paragraph, here are some things to remember:

1. This is what we call a "sloppy copy." That means that it does not have to be perfect. You do not need to worry about spelling everything right. Just get your ideas into sentences.
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2. Do not try to do this paragraph all at once. That is a lot of writing. You have all week to work on the paragraph, so work on it a little bit each day.

Time to get busy writing! Good luck.