Emily
Hyatt
Language
Arts
7th
Grade
Writing Organization
Procedural
I. Getting Started/Warm-Up Activity:
* Hello class! To get started, I need for you to count of in groups of
5. Each group needs to get a piece of
poster board, and a marker and spread out to where you
are away form all the other groups. Once
you are in your groups, please sit still and quiet so that we can get
started. Push the poster board and
marker to the side for a moment, and as a group, brainstorm ideas for
organizing your writing. I’ll give you
about two minutes, an then you need to have a
spokesperson to share with the class ways that you organize your writing. Explore questions like: Do we make a map,
list, or a web to organize? Do we just
start writing? Do we talk to friends? (3 min. share with class)
II. Review
(from previous day)
* Yesterday, we thought of ways to get topics for our writing, and you
came up with topics that you would like to explore when writing an expressive
paper.
III. Introduction
(for today’s lesson)
* Today, we are going to
explore some organizational strategies that you can use to help structure and
organize your writing once you have chosen a topic to write on. Once your topic has been chosen, you can use
different types of writing organizers to organize your ideas; from there, you
can take off, and begin writing. The
organizational strategies we are going to look at today are webbing, and using
an idea pyramid. We will do a web as a
class, and once you understand how that works, you will see how to plug ideas
in on an idea pyramid as well. (2 min. of introduction)
IV. Points/Objectives
of lesson (NCSCS-1.03-learner will interact in a group setting
by responding appropriately to comments and questions, and giving appropriate
reasons that support opinions. NSELA-5:
students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different
writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences
for a variety of purposes.)
*Help students plan and organize their writing.
*Allow students to practice organizing writing both as a class and as a
group to improve their organization skills.
V. Materials:
*Markers
*Poster board
*Webbing handouts
VI. Guided
Practice (teacher/student)
* Okay, so what book did we
just recently finish reading? (Homeless Bird) Right! Now, why don’t we, as a class, create a web
organizer together so that you can learn a new way to organize your
writing? First, lets choose a topic
(allow a few minutes for ideas, and then encompass their ideas into the broad
theme of “Koly’s Journey.” Now that we have our topic, and we have put
it into the center of our web, we can come up with sub-categories to write on
about that topic, and form a web that represents all the aspects we wish to put
in our paper.
* Second, we need to think
about the story and focus on the major highlights of her journey. What could they be? (Marriage and a new
family, being abandoned in a city of widows, finding a place to live and
somewhere to work, meeting her life long friend and soon to be husband, and
starting over) There are five subcategories here, and we will put them
down, and then refine it later.
* Thirdly, we need to branch
off of the sub-categories, and address specific events. What are some specifics on Koly’s marriage? (They wanted her dowry, her sass was
mean, and her husband is sick and dying) What about how she was abandon the city by her Sass? (She left her in the city
of widows, she had no where to go, she met Maa
Kamala, Raji, and other who took her in.)
* Okay great! This looks
good. Does everybody see where we’re
going with this? Are there any
questions? The main thing that you need
to remember is how important organizing your writing is. When your thoughts are clearly worked out,
and your topic is pinpointed, your writing will be much stronger and
affective. Your writing needs to be
focused, planned out, and clear. Webbing
and other techniques like the “main idea pyramid” are great ways to focus and
organize your writing. On the “main idea
pyramid,” the name of the book goes on the very top of the pyramid, the topic
under that, and then the sub-categories branch off from beneath that; it’s just
like webbing, only in boxes that work top to bottom rather than the center out.
Next are the details. This is just like
webbing that we did together on the board, only a little different format.
* Remember, first pick a topic for your main
bubble, or top block, second, brainstorm ideas that you would like to address
into subcategories that branch out, or down from the main topic, and thirdly,
find supporting details to accompany your subcategories, and write them out
from the subcategories. (10 min. practice as a class)
VII. Independent
Practice (student)
*Now, just for practice, I want a member of each group to come up and
choose a children’s book. There is: Little
Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, Goldie Locks and the
Three Bears, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Pinocchio. With these books, I would like for you to do
a team web like we did together. Pick a
topic, brainstorm sub-categories, and go from there. You may use either the traditional web like
we used, or you can try the main idea pyramid.
Put your webs on the poster board, and then we will share.
(10
min. group work)
VIII. Closure/Expectations
(for tomorrow’s class)
*Have students share posters with the class, and hang them around the
room.
(5 min. product
presentation)
***Additional sources to help with this lesson in the future:
-Martha Combs Readers and Writers in the Middle Grades text