My 4th grade son asked me to hang out with him at Oak Grove Elementary on his birthday. I believe when your ten year old wants to show off his class this says wonderful things about his school and his teacher, Cheri Jackett .
His teacher knows that I write both fiction and nonfiction for a living and asked if I wanted to speak about writing after the PBS show on the Dustbowl. Some of the students were writing historical stories, others were doing a report from a historians point of view. GMC (Goal, Motivation, Conflict) would work for both of her class assignments.
This is what the students came up with for GMC:
Their goal – (what are these people going to do?)
- move to the plains to grow wheat
Their motivation – (why are they going do this?)
- free land
- make money
Their conflicts – (what challenges are they going face?)
- drought
- price drops
- dust storms
- have to build a house
Good answers!
Then we tried another:
Their goal – (what are these people going to do?)
- go to the Rocky Mountains to find gold
Their motivation – (why are they going do this?)
- get rich
- buy things
- feed our families
But then we went deeper – motivation is emotional also. Yeah, we want to get rich, feed our families and buy bling- but why do we want to do this? Check out these impressive answers:
- pride that we could do this or buy this
- greed because we are jealous of other people who have this
- becoming famous if you have gold
- cool factor of having gold or being rich
Their conflicts – (what challenges are they going to face?)
- no gold
- the town went bust
- ran out of money
- no supplies
- others stole the gold
- got lonely
- want to quit
Not only did they get external conflicts, but also the internal conflicts.
Way to go class!
Samantha Ross 