March 20, 2013

I was successful with the second grade at School B by providing appropriate motivation and learning supports for them to finally do some writing.

I turned the paragraph writing assignment about a ball sport into writing a Sports Riddle.

Class went like this:

First, because students had expressed disappointment and jealousy at my parameter that not everyone could write about soccer, I started them off with a QuickWrite activity to "write as many words as you can to describe the game of soccer.  The winner has the most descriptions.  You have 3 minutes.  Go!"

Then, I scribed their descriptions.  I also gave them sports vocabulary and concepts such as rules and the object of the game.  Next, I turned the easel around to show them my Sports Riddle.  We checked off which words (provided by them) that I used.  I referred them back to a Word Web that I had modeled using for them previously.

The benefit of reminding of them of the Word Web was to show how it could actually be useful in writing a good riddle.  They also saw that the riddle did not have to have EVERYTHING, only sufficient detail to infer what the sport was.

While they were writing, I had a sports book available (Famous Sports by Cameron Fox, pub. Penguin Young Reader, 2001)) for them to refer to. Also, to motivate them about the enjoyable aspect of riddles, I read aloud vivid descriptions (adjectives and verbs, and place nouns) of animals (from the picture book Africa Calling, Nighttime Falling by Daniel Adlerman, pub.Charlesbridge, 1996).  A book doesn't have to be explicitly a riddle book: just as I had done with the students at School B, I simply omitted the words naming the sport from my model (from the textbook and a piano book featuring sports)

The students first completed their Word Webs, and then moved on to their 2-5 sentence riddles that contained sufficient description.  The students were happy to share and edified by useful and practical suggestions to describe their sport accurately and effectively.  I was charmed by one student who even cleared his throat dramatically a few times to read.  I gave a discarded costume jewelry tiara to the best riddle writer!  She was very happy and proud.