Sharing Bench stories #SOL2022 18/31

Everyone once and awhile, I scroll across a really quirky post on Twitter, follow the thread and find inspiration for student writing. In one such thread, a curious photographer shared photos of park benches in obscure locations, ones in which the benches remained while everything around them seemed to have changed. These were benches frozen in time.

Followers joined in posting their own uniquely positioned benches. It was a sharing of unusual benches.

And as I scrolled, I imagined the narrative of place, imagined using these photos to generate student writing about time and place – how setting can drive a story. What happens in a story when one element of setting remains unchanged? Does this become the witness to history?

I collected 16 images in total like these, saved them to a slideshow, and hope to have students write the story of the bench. Where is this, what happened, who was involved, and why?

They can choose to write a narrative or an informational text responding in any creative way that follows their unique imagination and tells the story of the bench.

Here’s to sharing bench stories and a link to the slides if you’d like to use this: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11-9_JLaNQCe86x04myOFHbtTmK8uH2TGAX5LzEYq7Fk/edit?usp=sharing