Children love to write stories, but, influenced by the media, they emphasize action and dot placeless landscapes with flat, one-dimensional characters. The Whole Story addresses these issues and provides a practical and innovative model to help teachers guide young writers to find the whole story - and to tell it well. Karen Jorgensen takes you inside her classroom, demonstrating how - over the course of a school year - she gives lessons, conducts conferences, and facilitates shares to help writers develop and refine stories. Basing these interactions on a combination of "inquiry" and "modeling," she guides students to observe how people move, talk, and feel. She helps them explore everyday landscapes, examine event logic, and then revise stories in consultation with other writers. In the first section of the book, Jorgensen outlines procedures for running a successful workshop and introduces the technique of scene writing to help writers move from action to character-driven fiction. Subsequent sections focus on the craft of characterization, first guiding youngsters to observe the world as writers and then showing them how to use these observations to rewrite characters in their ongoing fiction. Jorgensen also introduces methods for refining stories, discovering setting, clarifying plot, finding themes, and evaluating craft. The appendix provides student handouts to support lessons. Read Less