We are writing about a great day at an amusement park. I used The Screaming Mean Machine by Joy Crowley as my anchor text for writing a small moment on a roller coaster.
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| "map" of our roller coaster ride. The stars indicate great moments we could write about. |
Roller Coaster by Marla Frazee is another option, but I think
The Screaming Mean Machine is a better choice. I love the use of vivid verbs and similes. After we read the book, I did a Smartboard lesson review Joy Crowley's use of creative language.
I have posted the link to the Smartboard lesson at the bottom of the page. Next, I had the children draw a "map" of what it would be like to go on a roller coaster ride. This helped enormously when we sat down to write. Here are some pictures of our writing folders. I used a binding machine to bind together three pocket folders. You can see that I labeled each pocket (rough draft, final copy and so on). The last pocket is for miscellaneous papers, mostly handouts. It really helps to keep things organized during writing class.
Christine
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| we take notes when we run across great words |
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| We use stickers to show when we used one of our writing skills |
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B7F2yr3X_5kzZDdjNTk4MTItYWIxMy00ZGU0LTgxN2EtYTNmN2I2YTU1ZTg0&hl=en
I absolutely love this small moment lesson idea - roller coasters are so fun to describe and write about :) I am very interested in how you use the stickers in your writers folders ... do they place the stickers? how often? what skills exactly? You have amazing ideas - thanks for sharing!
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