Use Fictional Writing with Elementary Authors

In response to:  "Fantastical Enlightenment for Elementary Students."

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/elementary-student-writing-fantasy-gaetan-pappalardo

In this blog post by Gaetan Pappalardo, he emphasizes the importance of introducing young writers to the genre of fiction.  In his post, Pappalardo refers to the fact that many states do not even add fictional writing to their standards/benchmarks and that kids are being cheated.  Children are exposed to fictional material on a daily while on the internet and watching television.  The majority of the books that children read are fictional stories.  When it comes to writing, many young students struggle more than they did when beginning to read.  If students were encouraged to use their imagination in their fictional writing, they would enjoy writing much more.  Pappalardo talks about how teachers do tell students to write about what they know, but often times do not give students the freedom to really write about what they want to write about.  Instead, teachers often times tell students to write about anything that true and non-fictional.  I agree with Pappalardo that if a teacher takes the time to model fictional writing and discuss fictional writing ideas with a classroom of upper elementary students that kids would really enjoy writing much more.  As teachers, we need to find time to squeeze in fictional writing as much as possible!