Bloodthirsty

We've been doing NaNo prep this week. It's hard to believe November is only a few weeks away! One of our minilessons was to brainstorm story ideas. I have a Pinterest board of writing prompts, and since I didn't have any idea of what I wanted my story to be about, I scrolled through the board during our Writers Workshop worktime to see what inspiration struck. 

Three ideas jumped out at me, but one of those immediately grabbed my students' attention: at her grandma's funeral, a girl learns that her grandma was the Grim Reaper. In her will, the grandma left the job and all that comes with it to her. I combined it with the idea that she can see everyone's lifespan above their heads and spots someone with an infinity symbol. Then there was the sentence "The first time I met the Grim Reaper, she came for my hamster." 

My class unanimously voted that I tell that story. I was a little hesitant, "But think of how many people are going to die in my story!" Their eyes lit up, "But Miss H, killing off characters is so fun!" "Yeah, it's the best part!" "You told us yourself; you need to be mean to your characters!" ...I did tell them that... 

I tried one last time, "How am I going to come up with all those death ideas?" 
Their response, "We'll help you!" "Yeah!" ...Then a rousing chant, "Do it! Do it! Do it!" 
The bloodthirsty little savages... 😂 So that's the story I'll be doing. We had more work time today to come up with conflict for our stories. My idea is getting fleshed out more and more. I'm getting excited!

Quite a few 7-8th graders are going to try doing NaNo this year; I think we're up to five. I have a separate classroom for them, so during study hall I helped them join that NaNo group. It'll be cool to see how many of them make their word goals!