Thursday, October 6, 2011

Week 8 - Authors

Students have been reviewing previously taught comprehension strategies this week through the study of "There Was an Old Lady..." books.  They have reviewed the strategies of asking questions, making connections, and visualization.  Let me tell you, visualization is very interesting when you are visualizing an old women who is eating strange things such as pumpkins, bats, whales, and cows!  To wind up our unit the students worked together to write their own "There Was an Old Lady..." book.  With one minor name change (the original title was "The Was an Old Mrs. Heath") they great work of "There Was an Old Teacher Who Swallowed a Ruler" was created. I will be letting kids take turns bringing it home in their new book bags next week.  It is quite the fun story!

Copying the writing style of favorite authors is a super way for students to practice their writing skills.  Do you have a reader who LOVES Clifford?  Have them write their own Clifford adventure.  The same for Magic Treehouse, Fly Guy, or any other book series.  We will be beginning to write how-to books in the coming weeks.  My Lego lovers can write how-to manuals for building their favorite designs and my Pokemon fanatics can write manuals of how to win against their friends.  Anything you can do to get them to buy into writing is a winner in my book!

Happy writing!!

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