Very Cool Writing

I wanted to share some amazing writing with you!

In our nonfiction/expository study this past few weeks, we have been learning to exercise our writing muscles with this genre. We have been reading, analyzing, and synthesizing a lot of great nonfiction, so we have found a great deal of good mentor texts to get us familiar for writing.

What's the point? This activity had us examining author's purpose and message in order to help us come up with a solid central idea for our own piece.  We looked at four different texts, all dealing with the same topic, but with different "points." They were all about immigration, but one was a biography, one was a textbook, another literary nonfiction (nonfiction written in narrative form), and the last was a memoir. We charted the different themes and what the authors' central ideas were. We then examined how every bit of each of those texts supported and focused on that main idea.

Next, we used a topic, "The best thing about Thanksgiving" (very timely) to brainstorm several "points" and central ideas we could have. Examples ranged from "the turkey" to "playing games with family."  We kept the points specific, and they chose one. From there, they wrote a piece, always checking in their minds, "Did I stick to my point? Is this detail important to my point?"

It was extremely helpful in creating focused pieces. Everything supported the main idea.  We are continuing our practice and looking at our other stories (already written and/or still in process) and evaluating them with that eye.

Another activity we did was based on a Bluebonnet Nominee, Mirror, Mirror. In it, the author created "reverso": poetry that can be read up, and down.

Here's Mrs. Forrest's example:

Empty stockings
awaiting
small treasures.


Now the reverso:

Small treasures
awaiting
empty stockings


The kids' were actually WAY better...but I have to keep that a secret for reasons of the season...