An Original Word Choice Prompt:
Sausage Story:
A Riddle-inspired Tale

Corbett's Teaching Instructions:

This is a writing prompt inspired by a word game I invented one night during an insomnia bout. To give students a different purpose in reading my lesson's teacher model (below), I set up my word game as a challenging riddle for my students to solve. Or attempt to solve.

I challenge teachers to introduce this riddle, then challenge some of their students to designate a page in their writer's notebooks called "Sausage Sentences." If you keep reminding them they designated this page, they'll continue to think about this word game outside of school hours too.

I wrote out the teaching instructions here to not immediately give away the riddle. Don't worry, teachers! You'll know my riddle's answer soon, but I would prefer it if those discovering this prompt to experience the same riddle that my students do...because the students really enjoy the riddle, and I suspect teachers will too even though teachers often just want the answer...

Here's what you need to know to start solving this riddle and writing prompt: a sausage sentence is a special kind of sentence that is created by a writer, then it's used as an important sentence in creating a story that is always entitled "A Sausage Story." The finished stories are supposed to be shared with families or friends, whose reading task becomes solving the same riddle: "Why is this story called 'Sausage Story'?"

Start by sharing a teacher model of a sausage story. I provide mine below, but I encourage teachers using this exercise to create a story of their own; it makes the experience more meaningful, and it gives the teachers some solid writing advice to be able to offer to students, which they'll most likely need, since this is not an easy writing prompt.

Hand out the teacher model to your students with these instructions: "This story is a riddle. The story has nothing to do with sausage. But its title--Sausage Story--is a completely appropriate title. Your task is to figure out why it's called Sausage Story. Good luck. Very few students immediately solve this riddle."

(Click here or on the image to print a full-page handout of this story.)

Hint #1: I have never had a student solve the riddle when reading the story through the first time. Their initial guesses for why it's called what it's called mostly are about making sense of how sausage might have something to do with the plot, or they see sausage possibilities with images (like the hanging sock), and they try to explain how it must have something to do similes and metaphors that aren't in the story but might be, if we added them. Entertain all guesses; I love to playfully make fun of the really outrageous ones, so we can all laugh. Then, it's time to give this first hint: The sausage has nothing to do with the plot or what the story is about; it has everything to do with the structure, and the picture might help you understand what I mean by structure. This hint will get them re-reading and talking, and--just so you know--only once or twice have I had a student figure it out with just one hint. Remember, this is a purposely hard riddle.

Hint #2: Now aim them in at more minute structures that might exist with hint 2: The sausage is not the whole story; in fact, it's just a sentence in the story. Which sentence could it be? Students will now really look at all the sentences. Many will guess the right sentence, but usually they don't know why.

Hint #3: Now say: In a sausage story, the important sentence is either the first or the last sentence, but not both. Which do you think it is of those two choices? I like to poll the students after they think/talk about this. If I've been objective, I generally have a 50/50 split. Usually, I have a few kids discover the actual answer with this hint; watch for their eyes to light up and then ask them to please keep the secret just a bit longer. Congratulate them; they feel honored being the first to discover the answer, and it drives some of the other kids to really be able to understand an answer they know their peers have begun discovering.

Hint #5: Say: In this story, it's the last sentence, and it's because the sentence has a very special structure. Look at the picture of the sausages. Then look at that sentence. Who can see the answer? Hopefully, many will start getting it. As they do, again ask them to keep it to themselves. I have been known to ask them to mark the sentence in a special way which shows me they definitely know the answer, and they are happy to do this and then keep their markings secret from their classmates.

Hint #6: Show them a different sausage sentence than the one in the teacher model, explaining that this is a sausage sentence too. Ask them to think about structure again.

Hint #7: Ask your students who know the answer to make up a hint for the others who don't. Tell them the hint can't give it away. I find this is a really good way to encourage them to think really hard about what makes a good hint in a riddle. Often, the students can't immediately think of a hint that doesn't give it away, so it gives those with the answers something to do while the others still study the sentences.

Last Hint: Now show them the story's sentence with the explanation visually demonstrated. Have them look at the picture of the linked sausage to help them make the connection:

And...finally, for the clue-disabled, the answer: What is a sausage sentence?  It's a meaningful string of words whose beginning and ending letters match.  The key is that the words must create a sentence that make sense; it's easy to write nonsense or semi-nonsense using this structural challenge. It's hard to write one that might actually appear in a story.

Give your students some time to compose a few sausage sentences. They're tough for a lot of students, but it's much easier to start with short ones. Students quickly discover that the words a and an can't appear in a sausage sentence, and the is a hard word to make work well. It becomes a good exercise in exploring interesting word choices.

I have been collecting interesting words to launch a sausage sentence. If you press the button below, you can see some of my favorites.

Sausage Sentence Starters:

Students need to understand that if you get stuck in the middle of composing a sausage sentence, it's often necessary to erase the last two or three words (instead of just one) to help the sentence find its way again.

If you pause the lesson and ask students to think about writing new ones for the next day or two, you'll be impressed at some of the ones students bring in to you. I always had a few students who would compose them with their families, which I always thought was evidence of a strong family structure at home.

Once students have written a sausage sentence they like, their job is to write a story that either begins or ends with the sentence. This is really an interesting thinking and writing challenge, if you do the exercise well, which means you write a story where the sentence doesn't stand out so strongly that future riddle-solvers immediately call it out as being the unusual sentence. To do this, a writer finds himself/herself really looking at the specific words in the sausage sentence, and then building a context for them (with the story's other sentences) so that sausage sentence doesn't glare at you as just a weird-sounding sentence. In my teacher sample, for example, I didn't want yodeled to stand out as a weird word with no previous context, so I made an allusion to the Swiss hiker about four or five sentences before the sausage sentence happened. That's the kind of thinking you need to do to write a successful sausage story, which isn't easy--for adults or for student writers.

Have your students look at Meg's sentence below again. Ask, "Would this sentence make a better story as the first sentence or the last sentence?" Have students talk about this. Have them talk about the various ways they could present the sentence--as description or dialogue or...?

Finally ask students to write a ten- or more-sentence story that uses the sausage story as its first or last sentence. Remind them that everyone's title must be "Sausage Story," and once the story is written, they will be able to present it as a riddle to their family and friends, much like we did in class. I find this authentic "publishing" opportunity gets some of my kids much more excited about writing their stories.

To encourage revision--after students have written their stories--have them read and respond to each other using WritingFix's Word Choice Post-it Notes. Students can rank their own use of the five word choice skills on the Post-it (ranking means they can only have one 1, one 2, etc.), then have a reading partner rank the same skills on their paper. The two students can have a conversation comparing the two rankings, and from that conversation, set some word choice revision goals for their rough drafts.