I loved using the images and pictures from the book The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg. This picture book is filled with individual pictures on each page containing a title and a single line of text. The pictures are vivid images such as a girl getting ready to cut a glowing pumpkin, a house taking off like a rocket ship, and plants starting to grow out of the pages of a book. Hearing the students exclaim, “Whoa!” and “Wow!” while showing them the pictures for the first time is extremely entertaining. You can see their minds starting to spin with ideas about what they are going to write about.
The book has a great intro to read to the students to help get them even more into the story behind the book and pictures as well. In steps an awesome teacher, Frank Fitzpatrick. Frank used to be an ITRT here in Henrico, but moved up to Maryland where he teaches 5th graders. Frank and his team came up with the idea of making a movie to introduce and get the students even more excited and intrigued about their writing with these story starters. I really wish I had this video when I was in the classroom. I will most definitely be taking this video and sharing with all my teachers to use with their students. Enjoy and have fun writing!
