The Idea Jar – Story Starters
By MARISSA DESPINS Updated Feb 20, 2024
Hello friends! Today I am here to share another post in my mini Lesson series. With these posts I hope to provide you with some quick, easy to implement lessons that you can take away and use in your classroom immediately. This lesson focuses on idea generation for Writer’s Workshop, using The Idea Jar by Adam Lehrhaupt.
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Idea Generation for Writing success
During Writer’s Workshop, I like to encourage my learners to brainstorm their own ideas, and write unprompted as much as possible. However, coming up with their own ideas about what to write can sometimes be a struggle.
Throughout the year, when I start to notice them running out of ideas, I will do some quick idea generation mini lessons to help get their creative juices flowing. We keep our ideas in our Writing Folders to reflect back on whenever they can’t think of what to write about. This is one of the lessons I like to keep in my back pocket to pull out when I notice their creativity starting to wane.
The Idea Jar Writing Activity
To begin the mini lesson, I like to do a read aloud of The Idea Jar by Adam Lehrhaupt. You can grab a copy of this fun story on Amazon by clicking on the image or button below!
This story revolves around a jar full of characters who escape their jar. They run wild, creating a variety of fun writing ideas. The illustrations are gorgeous, and the story is funny and engaging. If you don’t have a copy of the book, you can listen to a YouTube read aloud version below.
Do you struggle with keeping kids on task during a class read aloud? You won’t want to miss our post on keeping students accountable during a class read aloud!
Brainstorming ideas For Writing
After listening to the story, I pass each student a graphic organizer so we can brainstorm ideas for silly stories. You can snag yourself a free copy of the graphic organizer I used by clicking here or on the image below.
Looking for some FREE graphic organizers that you can print and use right away in your classroom? You won’t wan to miss this post!
Group Idea Generation
To help us brainstorm our ideas, I put the kids in groups and pass each group a small bowl full of story gems. Each gem has a silly character, setting, or object written on them. Each group takes turns pulling out a few gems and coming up with a silly story idea. Then, the students write their ideas down on their graphic organizer. We spend some time sharing our silly ideas, and then place the graphic organizer into our Writer’s Folder to use the next time we run out of ideas. Be prepared for a lot of giggling, as these stories definitely are silly. The goofiness of the ideas really helps to get the kids thinking, engaged, and eager to write.
Making a Class Idea Jar
After the activity, I place the gems into a jar in our classroom, as our own “Idea Jar”. The kids can then use the gems to help them when struggling with ideas of what to write about.
The gems are super simple to make. All you need is Modge Podge, glass dollar store gems, and some typed up words.
First, simply type up some different characters, settings, and objects (“grassy hill”, “5 legged horse”, and “lonely princess”, for example), and space them randomly all over your page. The sillier the words you can think of, the better. They need to be far enough apart on your page so that they won’t overlap when covered with a glass gem. Also, be sure to make your words small enough to be completely covered by the gem.
Next, print out your page. Don’t cut the words out – just leave the page as is.
Then, put a blob of Modge Podge on top of each word, and top with a glass gem. Leave the page to dry.
When they are dry, you can easily cut them off of the page, and trim off any excess paper. When you are done, you will have a class supply of your own story gems!
I hope you are able to use this activity in your classroom! If you do, let me know in the comment section – I would love to hear how it went!
For more writing lesson ideas, check out our posts on descriptive writing and the RACE Writing Strategy!
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