Weaving Common Core into Persuasive Writing

As I learn more about Common Core and how students are going to have to read across multiple texts as well as think critically about what they are reading. I have decided that I need to start small and take baby steps. At the same time I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, so I am building on what I have done in the past that has been successful and integrating some new ideas with Common Core into our persuasive writing unit.

The first thing I do is share several favorite pictures books that are excellent mentor text including Alex and the Lemonade Stand.  Next we looked at a few mentor text wonders at Wonderopolis. Both of these examples set a strong foundation for students building their knowledge about what does persuasive writing look like and sound like.

To get my feet wet and start weaving some Common Core ideas, we looked at several articles from different sources on the Smart Board. The students came up to the board and underlined important facts, statistics, BIG names and quotes that supported the article. We had already discussed the specific criteria that makes a persuasive article strong. Next the students pulled sentences out of an article and wrote it on a sentence strip.  We used these as mentor sentences and labeled them. 

Finally the students read their own article, took notes and then we shared as a class.  As we discussed the writing across several texts, I noticed the conversation got richer because students would refer to the pictures books, wonders or articles as examples.  For example, "I remember in..." or "Don't you remember when we read...."  "Hey isn't it neat how all of the articles include data to support the argument."

I am positive that they have a much stronger base to start their research this week as they choose their "HOT topic."

Digital Showcase in Rm. 228

Every trimester, we celebrate our writing and just last week we invited the parents into our classroom.  The students had to present their persuasive presentations to their parents.  It was exciting to see their Sonic Pic commercials on our "big screen." This was our culminating activity for the students choosing from the digital toolbox, and I was thrilled with the results.  I was nervous about having my students choose their tool for their final project.  The class divided down the middle choosing Sonic Pic or Keynote. Some students even chose to do a voice over with key note which was exciting because in essence those students wrote two scripts. One for the text of the key note and the other one to explain the pictures as they showed on the "big screen."  In addition, over half of my class chose their topic from past wonders @wonderopolis.  Here are some past wonders that hooked my class:
*Where do Recycled Items Go?  Wonder #43
*How Does a Species Become Endangered?  Wonder #152
*How are Dolphins and Porpoises Different?  Wonder #248

Finally look at the picture above, Jillian created this final slide with a wide variety of animal pictures to show the importance of endangered animals and spelled the word HELP.  I was so impressed with how she created this.  Look closely---amazing!

Better than Bread Pudding!

I bet I have your attention--- I like chocolate, ice cream, and pie but I LOVE bread pudding.  Here is the part that is crazy I don't know how to make bread pudding, my mom never made bread pudding, but I love to treat myself when we go out to eat.  What does bread pudding have to do with Wonderopolis?  I always look forward to Wonder Wednesday and sharing the conversations with my students about the daily wonder.  The delicious part for me is when my students make connections with Wonderopolis beyond the classroom and extend to home.  I encouraged my class to try and connect their persuasive topics to a wonder of the day and use those facts in their research.

As I read McKenna's rough draft I was so impressed with her research along with her connections to the wonder. When I conferenced with her, I asked her where she found a few of her facts.  She told me the links on Wonderopolis helped her and I said that is exciting. But the bread pudding was when she told me it wasn't the links in the wonder but the links in the reply from Wonderopolis.  So if you haven't shared with your class the Wonder of the Day-I think you should. You will get your bread pudding.

PS. If you live in Ohio and near Cap City Diner they have the BEST bread pudding in the world!  Just look--

Wonderopolis is Mentor Text Heaven!

Have you ever experienced a moment when the lightbulb goes off and you say out loud, "How come I didn't think of that sooner?" and no one is in the room.  Well that moment happens to me often and yes I must confess I do occasionally talk out loud especially when driving to school in the morning thinking about my day ahead.  

I assigned WONDER homework as I typically do on Wednesdays so that my students could connect persuasive writing with What Does It Mean To Stand Up for Something?  We had looked at this wonder previously because I purchased the book Alex and the Amazing Lemonade Stand after watching the video in the wonder.  If you don't do anything else with this blog post, please watch the video from the link above-powerful!

This was their final part of the lesson for persuasive writing. Their HW was to read the wonder and leave a comment answering 3 questions.  How did the wonder persuade you to take a stand?  What was the strongest part of the wonder? What is your HOT topic?  As I read their comments which are all posted in the link above.  Again my class blew me out of the water.  I was so impressed with their thinking, connections with past lessons from class and YES they did connect the persuasive writing strategies with the wonder. Which brings me back to the light bulb.

Wonderopolis is a wealth of mentor texts-perfect for any non fiction writing piece. Not only can the wonder hook your students, allow them to extend their learning at home but also as the teacher you can use the text for teaching strong writing. Why had I never thought of that before?  In addition, I was so excited about how my students chose a wide variety of HOT topics that I created this wordle .  

  

Wonder Wednesday: Persuasive Writing and Ownership

As we start back to school this week, I am going to begin to push my students to think differently about the wonder of the day. Today for Wonder Wednesday, we are going to look at a wonder from a different point of view. As a class we are going to examine WONDER #43 Where do Recycled Items Go? I chose this article so my students will think beyond the collection of items. It also connects with our science unit.

• Where do recycled items go?
• What kinds of products are made from recycled items?
• How are recycled items sorted for processing?

Here are some of the focused questions that we will use to examine the WONDER from a different point of view.


*How did the author of the wonder grab your attention (LEADS)?
*How did the author of the wonder raise your awareness of the recycled materials?
*What are the most powerful points of the wonder?


In addition, I will ask the students to become more aware of published media. Students will choose their favorite commercial and write about it. Using the same 3 questions from above just inserting their commercial product. One of my goals is to allow the students time to notice persuasive writing that is all around them. Again connecting school learning with home learning.


Once we have looked at all the different types of persuasive writing, we will design our class rubric for grading their persuasive writing projects. There is power in allowing students to help design the rubric that that they will be held accountable to for grading. It is going to be a very busy start to our new school year.

Sonic Pics- Persuasive Commercials

Helping each other choose the MOST important points.

The students started working yesterday on their Persuasive Sonic Pic presentations;  however it was not the lesson that I planned over the weekend.  I have to admit I totally through my lesson plan out the window and allowed the class to redirect the lesson.  As I was introducing the idea yesterday, one of the boys said, "Mrs. Caplin if we think about the Super Bowl commercials as persuasive and how they try to make us purchase the product, why can't we create our own commercials with the HOT topics?"  I took my plans and through them in the trash just like any smart teacher would have done.  

From that point on we discussed and created a new rubric for what they believed would make a strong commercial.  Here is our class determined criteria:

*At least five slides with visuals that must include graphics/ charts/ and one created picture

*Each verbal text must connect to the visual and be at least 10-20 seconds long. At that point one of the students showed the class how the iPods have built in stop watches to practice timing their words as they read them aloud.
*Overall flow of the presentation including visual and words along with persuasive qualities

*We took a large index card divided into five equal groups: label the first slide (lead/hook) the next three support and finally the fifth slide (strong closing). This is where they started to record the MOST important facts from their writing.

This lesson turned out much better than I had planned, and they were so excited because it was their idea to create persuasive commercials.  Helpful hint of the day: Sometimes you have to throw your plans in the trash and allow the students the power to create new ones!

Sonic Pics-Digital Story Telling

Our class was successful with our first round of digital story telling with Story Kit.  After much "play" time Mr. Mark and I have chosen Sonic Pics which costs $2.99.  One of the important parts for me is that I continue to reinforce the writing process either on paper or with their iPods. Our class will be competing their Persuasive writing Tuesday and then they are going to create a digit story with their hot topics.

So let me start from the beginning, after sharing numerous mentor texts and examples of different Persuasive Writing, the students had to choose one HOT topic and their position on the topic:

1)  Should the driving age change to 18?
2)  Should there be required reading for 30 minutes 5 nights a week?.
3)  Why do teachers assign homework?
4)  Playing outside the first 15 min. then eat lunch (this would switch our current schedule)

After the students made their final decision, we charted their decisions so they could help each other.  Next we focused on writing strong leads.  This I have to admit blew my lesson plans out of the water for two days, I had to do extensive re-teaching but now they finally got it!  We then focused on the body of the writing introducing: simple, compound, and complex sentences.  Finally we worked and discussed strong closings.

Goals for  Sonic Pics:

1)  This one I believe is the most important having the students choose the MOST important support from their topic.  I believe this will be a difficult lesson for my students because they will have to focus on reading differently. Honestly at this point, most of my students believe every sentence is important but I am going to ask them to discern which ones are THE most important.

2) After the students have chosen their key points, they will type them into Sonic Pics and will add pictures, graphs, data to support their statements.

3)  Finally the students will do a voice over and present their digit story to the class.

Check back later to see how our journey into Digital Storytelling goes....here we go again and I am excited!

Mentor Texts + Technology = Persuasive Writing

Made with My Cool Signs.Net

First of all thanks to Karen at Talkworthy for using these creative scrabble letters in her post.I totally borrowed her idea. I am thinking differently about my next unit in writing which is focused on persuasive writing. I have been teaching this unit for a number of years however, this year I am focusing more on combining state indicators both from reading and writing to use my time more efficiently as well as how am I going to use technology within the unit.

Here are some of the ideas that I am not going to change from previous lessons.

*Using amazing picture books including: This School is Not White, Click Clack Moo, Earrings, I Wanna New Room which I learned about from Two Writing Teachers.

*My friend Frankie, at Literate Lives suggested these two titles: A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea and Should We Have Pets?

*Using our weekly Scholastic News as well as the ones that we have kept in our reader's NB all year to refer to the student debate section.

*Having the students begin to read the newspaper (paper or online version) and bring in an article that supports persuasive writing.

What I am going to change this year is the option on how to record their notes as well as the end product. I am going to give the students a menu to choose from for their final presentation.

*Using evernote to record their thinking instead of paper/pencil

*Using their iPod and the app Storyrobe which uses voice and pictures.

*Using flip videos to create their presentation which will be saved to their iPods

*Keynote which will be saved to their iPods for final presentation

This will be another HUGE learning curve for me because I have not used Storyrobe or flip videos in my class this year. I am excited but nervous about how the menu will work with my class. I am most excited about the students having choice on their final presentation. Check back on Wonderful Word Wednesday for another fun surprising picture book for persuasive writing.