A portion of the school’s Cooper Library designated as the “The General Story: A Shop for All Your Narrative Needs” lets all students, grade 1–12, visiting with classes or on their own, learn about the parts of a narrative, including plots, settings, characters, and more.
“The space has energized reading and writing across our lower school divisions,” says Elizabeth Johnson, director of the library and one of the people who dreamed up the idea of having a “market” to spark student interest in writing. “We find that students are choosing to write in their spare time—whether during recess, study hall, or on their own in the evening.”
When students visit, they receive a shopping list of items that make a good story and then move through the space to collect those elements. To begin writing their stories, students can choose a storyline from the “plot wall,” use an old-school viewfinder to consider points of view, and then spin the “setting wheel” to determine the location. They also can pick up another piece of their story at a retired gumball machine, which is filled with small plastic capsules that contain plot twists written by older students at the school.
Johnson says she wanted to promote “the idea that all the elements that make great stories are available to anyone. When it comes to writing, we all have everything we need.”
The space, now in its second year, has spawned other writing initiatives at the school, including project-based learning through publishing that showcases student work as part of the fourth and fifth grade curriculum, along with poetry workshops, chapter book creations, and memoir writing.
The gumball machine with plot twists written by upper school students is at the front of the library’s General Story: A Shop for All Your Narrative Needs.
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