Making Writing Exciting and a New 100 Word Challenge

As the smoke cleared, what did you see?  

Making Writing Exciting: Interactive Scary Story Activity  Today you will be acting as assistants to a book publisher and working to make one of their dull stories more exciting. The story "The Abandoned House" is not as scary or exciting as the publishers were hoping for. Your task is to substitute some of the story's nouns and verbs to make the story more vivid and engaging. You can find the activity here. Can you apply what you learned from this activity to making your own writing more vivid, exciting, and engaging?  

Narrative Writing: A New 100 Word Challenge  This week's 100 Word Challenge is asks you to incorporate the phrase ". . . as the smoke cleared . . ." What role will smoke play in your story? Check out the prompt below. 

The document 100 Word Challenge: ... as the smoke cleared ... can be found in your Language Arts Google Classroom. We will be publishing our stories this Friday! 

Grammar: Dependent Clauses and Complex Sentences  You probably notice that the phrase "as the smoke cleared" cannot stand alone by itself as an independent sentence. It's what we call a dependent clause because it is dependent on additional words (an independent clause) to form a complete sentence. When you combine a dependent clause with an independent clause you create a complex sentence. Let the good people at Flocabulary explain how dependent clauses, independent clauses, and complex sentences work, so, for one, you'll have a better idea how to incorporate the words "as the smoke cleared" into your own story. 

Homework  (1.) Read for at least 30 minutes at home each school night. (2.) Work on your 100 Word Challenge: ... as the smoke cleared ... story, which we will publish on Friday, November 4.