[Mentor Texts] Leading up to Memoirs

Today we started to write memoirs. While I'm glad to share the steps leading up to these very-first-inkling drafts, I'd rather just show y'all what they came up with.

Here is the mentor text we used.  It's from Knots in My Yo-yo String by Jerry Spinelli.  We are using his memoirs as our mentor text throughout. We read a few excerpts, and then started in with this paragraph:

And here is our marked up version:

We've talked about a lot of these writer's tricks before have made symbols for some of them.  Here you see that we talked about (sort of in order as you read):

--How the author gives a location and then goes into detail using the sense of smell and sound
--The use of the hyphenated modifer high-pitched (H-M)
--The juxtaposition  of the two things we normally think of has high-pitched and hi mom's voice.  We also noticed that this puts a small piece of humor in.
--Figurative Language that extends in the next sentence (FL)
--Repetition for Effect (^^)
--An ellipse

Using this information, they started their own first paragraphs.  These are unedited paragraphs written in about 10 minutes at the end of our discussion.

 

So...  what we have here is a wide range of ability, reliance on the mentor author's words, and a HUGE range in skills. It is true, if you hold it up to what 7th and 8th graders have to do on command for assessments, it isn't going to cut it. You can take red pens to it, you can talk about how they should know how to capitalize, or how their handwriting is illegible. Technically, all of that is true.



I, however, am celebrating the fact that they are playing with words.  That they set right to work, were eager, were helping each other, and identified writer's craft with a high level of success.  that two of my kiddos with autism used figurative language successfully.  That my kiddos that read at the 3rd and 4th grade level are successfully mimicking a higher-level text.  That students with oppositional defiant disorder COMPLETED the assignment as given.  That my students who failed all of 6th and 7th grade for not turning in a single page of work, did this AND turned it in.

For my kiddos at this point in the year, I call this a win. My poodle-heads are writers. The rest will come.

[Teaching Tools] He Continues to Ride... and He Has a Sidekick!

The Man on the White Horse has been spending a lot of time outside my classroom window lately (not in the road like he did here).  He pretty much has the sentence fragment part of his job nailed. The kidlets GET that. Actions verbs? Not bad. Nouns? Meh...  Adjectives?  Dicey. It's going well though. He's doing a fair job of teaching the poodle-heads some grammar lessons.

Last week we had to review helping verbs. After years of being told that verbs were actions, helping verbs make for a mighty kick in the grammatical pants. We listed some of the more common (be, have, do, could, might). I promised them that they were really called verbs even though you can't always "see the Man on the White Horse do them" (the guideline for determining if a verb is a verb). I further explained that each of these verbs needed another verb to help or it wasn't a sentence. We practiced with the Man on the White Horse. Someone (usually me) would gallop up to a student and say a phrase with only a helping verb, then gallop off. The rule is, if you're confused after the Man on the White Horse leaves, it probably wasn't a complete sentence. Phrases like "John might."  and "the chicken does" left the listener confused. *

Then one of the poodle-heads decided the Man on the White Horse needed a sidekick. He created "Mighty Man"--the helping verb side kick (get it "might"y Man?. He would come in with the helping verb, but the Man on the White Horse would have to add the other verb to make it complete.They'd have to HELP each  other to make a complete thought. Light bulbs flashed everywhere.Mighty Man and the Man on the White Horse, together, made helping verbs make sense. LOVE it!

At the same time, another student was certain I was mistaken about the need for two verbs. I assigned him the task of proving me wrong. He was to find a sentence that used only a helping verb and no action verb.  He found a couple-- "I might."  "It could."  We tested them out on the Man on the White Horse. If he galloped up and said those words, would we have all the information needed to understand the sentence?  The kiddo decided no. That while they might be used as sentences, they were actually missing something. He figured that the something that was missing would be found in the sentences before or after. I smiled widely at this.  So very very proud.



*Note--we have specified that the listener will not confused as to why a man on  a white horse is galloping up to them in school, since this is just his job. Any OTHER confusion though, THAT'S the learning tool.

It's a good day when...

T'was the first day back from a two-week vay-cay.  All the punkin' heads were reading their books.  Ms. M. notices A. leafing a little too quickly through his and questions his actions.  A. replies, "I'm looking for a hyphenated modifier." And he was!

It's a good day when one of your little turtle doves learns something you taught them, remembers it, and then uses it later, yes?

Hyphenated Modifiers are one of the "Smiley Face Tricks" presented by MaryEllen Ledbetter in her books, activities, and trainings.  I have used Smiley Face Tricks in my classroom, in my teaching of writing, and in my teaching of writing about reading for many years.  They make language accessible to students and give us a common language we can use to discuss our reading and writing.   

Hyphenated Modifiers, or hyphenated compound words, are often a class favorite.  It's a fancy-pants word (see what I did there?) that reminds them of the kinds of things teachers say all the time.  It is more true than we like to believe that students hear their teachers much like Charlie Brown hears his: "wah-wah wah-wah-wah wah." The students I teach have often decided that all of that "teacher talk" is garbage and is fully designed to make them feel foolish.  By the time I get them, any academic vocabulary I might use sends their brains in to la-la land, and I may as well be reading from a college-level physics text.  Seriously--even words like verb, noun, period, apostrophe, indent.  You'd be shocked.

By teaching them the "trick" of the hyphenated modifier, I can give them some of their power back. Learning a five-star word (see what I did there?) like "HYPHENATED MODIFIER" is kind of like opening the door on the rest of those words they never took the time to understand.  It's a word they've probably never heard, their parents may not have heard, and they have almost never been abused with on a test. Once they catch on, they feel like they know something special.  Then I sneak in some others--figurative language, adjective, compound word, syllable. 

So today was a big win.  A. used the term on his own to describe a word he was looking for.  He's ready for the big stuff now, right?  As long as I can keep him from climbing under the table, I think I'll start on complete sentences tomorrow!

Reading Cards

Today's story is not a silly one, it's a method I use in class that is successful more often than it is not.

A key to the success of any caped teacher is giving the students choices--enough choice to feel they are in control of their learning. I use these reading project cards to do that when we read a class novel, individual novel or stories.

Each color is a different kind of project or question:

Blue:  Writing Forms

Blue cards give directions for writing assignments. These are typically between one and three pages, and have the requirements listed on each.  Some of the most popular blue cards are 

• Write a Character Simile Poem.
• Prepare a list of questions to determine whether or not someone has read this book carefully.
• Write a letter to the main character of the book asking questions, showing support, or making complaints about situations in the book.

Red: Grammar Tools

Red cards practice grammar exercises.   They are short and relatively simple.  These card are an attempt to get the students to interact with the words on the page.  Favorites are:

• Find three examples of figurative language in the book, list them, and tell what kind of figurative language they are.
• Find five double-consonant words in the book.
• Alphabetize the words from your two favorite sentences in the book.

Green: Thinking

Green cards are questions that will encourage deeper thinking skills about the book or story.  The answers are typically written in a paragraph. For example:

• Write a new title for your book and explain why this is your choice.
• What was the most exciting or interesting part of the book?  Why?
• If you had enough money, what one object, thing, or place would you buy from the book and why?
• If you had written this book, what one part would you write differently?  Why?

Yellow: Projects

These are the most popular cards.  The students have grand ideas about what they will do, and, hopefully, they are successful!

• Create a set of maps from your story.  They can be 3-D, topographic, road maps, trail maps, or something else. 
• Make a comic book version or an animated version (using Alice.com or stop-motion animation) of your book.
• Make a travel brochure for your book.

When I use these cards, I assign the students a particular number of cards.  The 8th graders are reading Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell.  I assigned them 2 Red cards, a green card, and a choice between a yellow and blue card.  They shuffled through the decks and picked their cards.   This takes some organization, and some pre-teaching, but watching them work on the different pieces, and hearing their conversations about the books is proof that learning is happening.


Projects from Island of the Blue Dolphins--a pastel of the cover of the book and a clay model of the boat the white men used:

Projects from Because of Winn Dixie--a small replica of the guitar Otis plays to calm the animals made from cardboard and duct tape, a cardboard and clay replica of the WInn-Dixie store and the scene where Winn-Dixie knocks over the fruit.

Complete the Sentence

In the golden mist of sunset...

"...I look at the sky."

"...I was looking at it and went completely blind."

"...was a rainbow."

"...we saw a big rainbow."

"...there was an army of knites (sic) waiting for them."

"...I found my dog."

"...we saw a little rainbow."
"...it started to rain."

"...there was a man that nobody talked to."

The Man on the White Horse

Truly, I don't know when I started doing this, if I stole it, or if it helps as much as I think it does, but The Man on the White Horse Series has been an integral part of my grammar curriculum for many years. The Man on the White Horse arrives to give various examples of poor grammar.  I'm never sure when he'll come up, but a few months into each school year, he's made his appearance and is quite well known.
Sentence Fragments:
"If The Man on the White Horse rode up and said that, then rode off, would you know what he was talking about?"  Followed by a dramatic presentation of a man on a horse riding wildly toward a student, shouting an enticing sentence fragment, and galloping away.

Run On Sentences: 

"If The Man on the White Horse came up and started to talk to you, and he won't stop, and he just keeps going, and you keep thinking his sentence is over but it just keeps going... you may have a run-on sentence." Also followed by a dramatic presentation and many student examples.

Nouns:

Could The Man on the White Horse point to it?  Could he go there? Could he hold it in his hand?

Action Verbs:

Could you see The Man on the White Horse do it?

And so it goes.  For whatever reason, this Man on a White Horse made an appearance one day.  He is still around over ten years later, and he is still teaching medium-quality grammar lessons.