Details.

Today, we our amazing third grade reading buddies had a special treat for us… they brought some of the personal narrative stories to share with us. As luck would have it, we’ve been working on trying to add more detail to our own stories to make them more interesting (not an easy task in kindergarten) and having our older buddies share their own writing with us turned out to be an unexpected perfect way to model the importance of details to a story.

As the children read with their buddies, I could see a few kindergarten eyeballs pop… these third graders were brilliant writers. They clearly knew what they were doing and maybe my sprouts could learn a thing or two from them.

When they left and we shared some of the stories they’d heard, the details all bubbled to the surface.

“My buddy wrote about a visit to a haunted house… there were skeletons, mummies, zombies, and a trail of bloody footprints!” One sprout shared.

“My buddy went to a fair and went on a rollercoaster, ate lots of food, played games, and had a really fun time,” another offered.

All these details are what make good writing, great writing. As much as we try to model with mentor texts and our own writing, nothing Mrs. D. or I could use is as powerful as the writing of a third grade buddy.