P I Z ZA Z
People Interested in Zippy and ZAny Zcribbling

PIZZAZ has been an Online Resource since 1995 from Leslie Opp-Beckman
For Scribblers and Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)

Materials

• Old magazines with a variety of pictures/topics
• Tape or glue
• Paper (poster size or booklet size)
• Scissors

Warm-Up Activities

Post examples of connectors and sequencing words (e.g. first, then, next, finally, etc.) on the board or wall for language support. You amy also want to post and review common story endings and beginnings (e.g. once upon a time, once long ago, in a land far from here....lived happily ever after, was never seen again, still lives there today, etc.).

Instructions

1. Students can work alone, in pairs, or in small groups.
2. Each author or author group receives a folder containing a set of magazine pictures. They create a story using at least 5 of the pictures from their folder. Story characters can be "melded" in the sense that all young boys, for example, in the set are the same character "John" even though they have different faces.
3. If he group has more than one author, the storytelling must be equally shared.

Variation

• Each author/author group receives a stack of magazines and selects a minimum of 4-5 interesting pictures which are then used to tell a story.
• Students write their stories after telling them.

Follow-Up Activities

1. Students' work can be compiled into a class anthology or wall display.
   
2. Students can illustrate stories with hand-drawn or computer-generated images.

Examples