Paragraphing...BACKWARDS: A Five Day Lesson Plan

     I am very proud of my students and the volume of writing they are now able to produce in a single setting. Most of them can routinely write more than one full page.  But with this dramatic increase in volume often comes a lack of punctuation.  In addition as the length of students' stories increases, the skill of paragraphing becomes even more important.
     Most resources about paragraphing are instruction before students begin writing.  There are all sorts of graphic organizers and hamburger diagrams.  I decided to tackle paragraphing after students have written.  By teaching about paragraphing after writing, I can also tackle issues like elaboration and end punctuation, which are still important skills that students lack.
     For the first paragraphing lesson, I copied some pages from the book we are currently reading.  I tell the students the main reasons for paragraphing:  changes in speaker, time, and place.  I used Whole Brain Teaching techniques with pair teaching and gestures to help students remember the reasons for paragraphing.  Using the text selection and highlighters (kids love those), I had my students highlight the three reasons for paragraphing in three different colors.  They did this in pairs. 
     The next day, I gave students a piece of writing I wrote without paragraphs.  Again in pairs, students discussed where the paragraphs should be.  As a class we shared our ideas, making sure to justify our conclusions. 
     On Day #3 it was time for students to begin revising their own writing.  I used Lucy Calkins "box" technique.  In this technique, students draw a box with colored markers around their paragraphs.  Students worked with pairs.  Once students make boxes around their paragraphs, I asked them to count the number of sentences in each box.  For their assignment during Writing Workshop, students need to add some detail sentences to any paragraph that has less than four sentences.  Since students write on every other line in their daybooks, it is relatively easy to add detail sentences.  I collected the daybooks and sorted students by those who were struggling with paragraphing and elaboration and those that were not. 
     The following day, I met with the students who were struggling the most for extra assistance.
     On the final day of the week, I had students choose a section of text and rewrite it for evaluation.  They had to take at least two consecutive paragraphs and rewrite them.  I went over the assessment rubric prior to the assessment.  Students had to be able to show at least two paragraphs of a minimum of four sentences each, correctly punctuated. 

Whole Brain Teaching: Oral Writing FREEBIE

     This summer I have been re-watching the classroom management videos that are available on Whole Brain Teaching.  If you have never heard of WBT, you have got to try Chris Biffle's methods!  Everything whole brain teaching is totally revolutionary and free!  He started out with great classroom managment tools.  Recently he has added more academic content.  I want to start some of his methods on day one. 
     One of my favorites is Oral Writing.  Chris maintains that students cannot improve in writing without first having good oral communication.  This is especially important for English Language Learners, students of poverty, and students with poor receptive and expressive language skills.  I assessed my class on the skill of oral writing on Step-Up Day when students had to use 7-Up sentences (sentences with a minimum of 7 words) to describe themselves and their hobbies (see my blogpost).  I found that many students had difficulties doing this.
     When I reviewed the video on Oral Writing, I noticed how Chris taught specific "adders" to help students extend their sentence length and improve their critical thinking.  I felt that I wanted to post these "adders" at the beginning of the year, so I made these adder strips.

          Each adder has a picture and a gesture.  That way, if a child gets stuck, their peers can non-verbally suggest an adder by doing its gesture.
In the spirit of Chris Biffle, this is a FREEBIE.  Just click the picture to get your own adders!