Watermelon or Seed Idea?

Today in Writer's Workshop we talked about our writing topics. We read two books by Donald Crews. 

The first one is called BigMama's, and it is about how when Donald Crews was little he spent a few weeks each summer at his grandma and grandpa's house.

Then we read the book Shortcut, and found out that this story was about one specific memory that happened one of those summers that Donald Crews spent at Bigmama's.

We are trying to write about specific memories, just like Donald Crews did in his book, Shortcut.

We talked about how some ideas are too big, like a watermelon.

Within a big idea, though, there are lots of little seed ideas.

For example, school is a too-big watermelon idea, but one seed idea would be our memory about when Austin got stung by a bee. Another seed idea from that big watermelon school topic could be when we found a vine swing in the woods when we observed objects closely.  Another example of a school seed idea is when today during the fire drill I had to run so fast to get to the door before it closed and locked us out.  We can be really specific and add good details with a seed idea.

Without even planning to go with our lesson, Alex brought in apples for snack.  Many of the kids ate so much of the apple, looking for the tiny seeds!

Can you give an example of a too big watermelon idea, and then a specific memory like a seed idea?