Today I’m going to try my hand at TpT! For now, just freebies until I perfect my skills. (I did create a literacy center game to pair with
Bananagrams a while ago, but that was a copyright issue, oops – I’m new!)
A few weeks ago I did a mini lesson around the book, The Daythe Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. Amazing book! There are many different writing ideas you can
take out of it but since our overall unit is Opinion we went the persuasive
route. Recently we jumped into Lucy Calkins with two feet. While my Lucy fandom
varies from day-to-day it can be monotonous – cue our crayon mini lesson.
For us third graders who have been working on voice and
persuasion in speeches the lesson took 3 days, for others it may take longer
depending on the level of exposure to opinion writing.
In the lesson freebie it goes in to MUCH more detail but I will keep it short and sweet for all of
you!
Day 1
We read the first page of the book with purpose, trying to
hear what the crayon was persuading the boy to do. Then we read it again
listening to his great voice and examples. I read a few more colors which we
added to a chart that organized what the crayons wanted and examples of how
they spoke directly to the audience.
That was all the more time we needed to start brain storming
objects in our lives that would want to quit. My class example was our pencils,
(something students have knowledge on and something that really would quit in
room 21) students came up with their Xbox, tablets, couch, grass, soccer ball
and much more!
After our objects were decided we did many partner brainstorms
and class share-outs to decide why they want to quit, examples the object will
use, and how they will address the audience (them!).
They did surprisingly well taking on the role of the object
and writing to themselves – it’s something we’ve never worked on but they
fooled some teachers around the district who came to observe.
Day 2
Most students wrote more the day before than they have all
year. I think that has to do consistently using Lucy and having a motivating activity
in front of them. Either way we were done drafting and ready to revise!
Today students heard three other crayon colors stories (they
begged for even more!) and this time really listened to the emotion and
vocabulary the crayon used. We took this as an opportunity to add better emotion
and vocabulary to our own writing.
Day 3
We finished the book, The Day the Crayons quit, spoiler –
the last crayon is the funniest and will have your class in stiches. Add an
extra minute to your lesson so they can come down back to class.
Today students finished revising, did minor editing, and
published their page for our class book. Students who finished early could add
a drawing to enhance their writing.
My kids really enjoyed this lesson and I’m happy to pass the
idea along! As promised in the title of this post … a puppy!
This weekend I had the absolute JOY of dog sitting my 3rd
grade teammate/dear friend’s sweet dog. My dog fix was not satisfied this
weekend and instead I’m toggling back and forth between doggie websites. A
puppy here I come! Tagdog is a beautiful Alaskan Malamute whose beauty you all
need to see. Thanks for sharing him for the weekend, Em! In true Colorado
fashion it was 70 all weekend and we got to spend a lot of time outdoors – he
also received more compliments at dinner than a supermodel (or so I would
suppose) a record 30-40+. Luckily it doesn’t go to his head.
For sticking out the lengthy post, here’s Tag!
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