We have been hard at work on narrative writing. We've been reading A LOT of mentor texts, generating ideas for writing, and working on narrowing our big ideas into smaller "seed" ideas.
I used Our Tree Names Steve to show my kiddos how events in a narrative are ordered {sequenced} to form a clear beginning, middle, and end. I also love this book because it really grabs their attention and I can show them how writers use emotions and feelings to hook their readers.
These two books are great for showing students how to write about small or seed moments. Don't you just love these books?!
After looking at the difference between a big idea and a seed idea, and generating ideas on a heart map and various other graphic organizers, I had my kids choose a special memory to turn into a seed idea. We made this anchor chart...
What I loved about having them write their ideas on Post-Its is it really helped me to see who was grasping the "seed" idea and who needed a little more help with narrowing their topic. I read each idea aloud and had my students tell me if that idea was too big or a seed idea. The ones that were determined to be too big, had to try to narrow their idea further before adding it to the chart.
After all of them finally picked a seed idea, I had them cut and paste these apple/seed cutouts into their writing journals. They wrote their seed idea on the apple and their details on the seeds.
{Obviously this is my example. Ha!}
Next week we will work on organizing and adding to our details before we start writing our rough drafts.
If you'd like my seed idea mini unit, you can check it out on TPT here.
Phew! It's always busy, busy, busy in second grade! I'm off to grab dinner! Have a great night friends! Tomorrow is Friday!!
0 comments:
Post a Comment