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Teacher Resources by Grade
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Story Writing from an Object's Perspective
|Grades||4 – 7|
|Lesson Plan Type||Standard Lesson|
|Estimated Time||Eight 50-minute sessions|
Students explore how to write from an object’s perspective. The teacher uses a picture book, Dear Mrs. La Rue, to introduce the idea of writing from a non-human’s perspective. A mini-lesson follows in which students work together to define the word "perspective." Students collaboratively write and share a short example of writing from a pencil sharpener’s perspective. Students ultimately write their own stories from an object’s perspective after reading the model story. This lesson takes multiple days as students prewrite, draft, revise, edit, and publish their stories.
In this lesson, students learn to write from a perspective far from their own. Instead of writing about themselves, other humans, or even animals, students write from an object’s perspective. This type of writing process is developmentally challenging because, as Deborah Dean explains, “writing about a topic from different perspectives can help writers explore the topic and learn more about what they know and what they still need to learn.” By writing from a perspective other than their own, students can challenge their insights and assumptions by investigating the world from an unfamiliar vantage point.
Dean, Deborah. Strategic Writing: The Writing Process and Beyond in the Secondary English Classroom. Urbana, IL: NCTE 2006.