How do you teach "How-To" Writing? I use tons of my own ideas, different ideas found all over Pinterest, and ideas from blogs. This year I began the unit like I usually do each year, by writing a whole class story about How To Brush Your Teeth. This is super interesting because the kiddos forget all the little details involved in actually brushing your teeth. Of course I brought my own toothbrush and tooth paste in and proceeded to brush my teeth following their steps. They thought this idea was hilarious. It's like they thought I NEVER brush my teeth. As the lesson goes on I do exactly what they say to do in order to model how to slow down and THINK ABOUT every little detail involved. They were laughing historically throughout the whole process but, when they got to the part where you spit it out, they forgot to mention to spit it IN the sink. Can you just imagine what happened next? YEP, I SPIT ON THE FLOOR!!!! They were insanely excited at this point of the lesson, telling me how wrong I was. Of course I had to point out that I only did what they told me. It was amazing to watch all the little light bulbs come on ALL around the room with comments like, "oooohhh" and "we forgot"! Their faces were PRICELESS!!! (Of course after this we went on to learn about steps, materials, more details, comparing How To stories to other stories and publishing. This was so much fun that I thought I would bring in a sweet treat for our next lesson on "How-To" writing. I began by stating, “ How would you like to build a snowman?” and after several excited SCREAMS and “NO WAY'S" (because we live in FL and have NO snow) I pulled out several materials: (We completed one whole class before they received their own.)
1 long rope twizzler, 3 large marshmallows, 2 toothpicks, ten mini chocolate chips, 1 small orange tic tac, 2 pretezel sticks
After several more excited screams, we worked together to build this little guy. Then we listed the materials and the steps we took to build the classroom snowman on chart paper. (Of course there was lots of turning and talking to discuss those tricky missing steps.)
Day 2:
I gave them all their own materials and off they went to build and write. Of course at the end of today’s lesson they got to eat their yummy snowmen!
Days 3-7:
We wrote some more, talked some more, and learned to transfer from the planning sheet to the “Fancy” sheet.
You can get this writing FREEBIE by clicking Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?
0 comments:
Post a Comment