Today I will be engaging my students in a discussion about our four day writing project. Each day we discussed and produced templates, maps and a predictable chart all to build up to today's opinion writing. It is important for my students to learn how to use templates, thinking maps to help them organize their thoughts and ideas for their writing. These tools can be used not only for today's two sentence paper, but for multi paged papers in high school.
"Today is the exciting day of writing for us. We are going to write our opinion papers and illustrate them. You will be the Author and Illustrator. How fun is that? Let's quick look at what we did before today."
I point to the Beginning/Middle/End template, story parts that they think are their favorites, the Bubble Map with all the adjectives and finally to the sentences that they dictated to me.
"Today we will be reading our sentences from the predictable chart. Remember to follow along closely so you know when it is your turn to read."
I like to use predictable charts with my ELL students. The writing process takes four to five days and gives my students multiple opportunities to hear the story and orally read everyone's sentences. Repetition is an important strategy for learning vocabulary.
Because I chose name sticks randomly, they will come up today and read their sentences in that order. I can get 5 or 6 sentences on a page. Sometimes I will call all the students that have dictated sentences on that page to come up and get in a line to save time.
"I will begin by reading the first sentence, which is mine. I am going to touch each word with the pointer as I read the sentence. When I am done reading I want EVERYONE to raise their arms and then point to the chart. I want you to point to the sentences and touch each word as we all read the sentences."
I hand the pointer to the student and he/she repeats the process. They read their sentences all by themselves. I stand by the chart to prompt when needed. We all raise our arms in the air and point to the sentences and chorally read as the student touches each word.
The pointer is passed to the next student and the process is repeated until all sentences on that page are read. I flip the page over and call all the students to line that dictated the sentences to me from this page. This is repeated until all sentences have been read.
"Now it is time to write our opinion papers. We will use the story paper that I have typed the sentence frames in a dot-to-dot font with a line for them to write their words on."
The paper passers will pass out the papers and I call the students by row to get their pencil boxes. The students go quickly to do their writing. I walk around with my pad of sticky notes to write their chosen words on the blank lines. I prompt my higher students to sound out the words. I use a highlighter for several of my students that struggle with fine motor skills. They just have to trace what I have highlighted. I remind them of capital letters at the beginning of the sentence, spaces and periods. Some of my students like to use only one color when drawing so I now encourage the use of at least five colors when drawing their picture. When they have finished their papers, they clean up their tables and sit on the carpet and quietly read a book.
When most of the students are done writing, I have them books put away and we begin to read our opinion student work front of the class. We applaud after each reading. I need to keep up the pace so that I don't loose anyone to boredom. My students are so proud of their writing and reading. I love how they are proud of each other in their different levels of ability.