Gifted Rural Writers Explore Place in Narrative Fiction Stories

Abstract

Place-based writing practices can enrich a standardized curriculum while increasing student engagement and helping students improve essential writing skills. In particular, place, which includes both the geographic surroundings and the local community with whom one shares a common space, can be a point of access to the language arts curriculum for gifted rural students, especially because place-based literacy practices can demonstrate that students’ place-based knowledge and interests are valuable assets they bring to their learning experiences. This article examines narrative fiction stories written by 237 gifted rural fourth graders as the culminating project of a semester-length fiction unit of a place-based language arts enrichment curriculum to identify how gifted rural fourth graders describe setting in narrative fiction stories and how they reflect a sense of place in those descriptions. Students’ descriptions of settings were explicated to note how they represented spaces both similar to and different from the rural communities in which they lived. Thematic findings reveal rich descriptions of nature, depictions of close-knit rural communities, and feelings of displacement among story characters who find themselves in unfamiliar spaces.

Gifted Rural Learners: Exploring Power, Place, and Privilege with a Focus on Promising Practices

“…In this article, data is shared from a section of the study in which students describe place in the settings in narrative fiction stories. Authors describe students' connections to place through their rich descriptions of nature, in their explanations of encounters with new surroundings, how they highlighted specific settings, in their depictions of rural communities, and in the topic of displacement (Kuehl et al, 2020).…”