This week, students practiced reading short texts and jotting down key ideas from what they read. We discussed how we can read and reread these articles because they are short. This helps us to really focus on those key ideas.
After spending the week with three articles, students had to jot down what they think all of the articles are mostly about. Because all the articles were on slightly different topics, students had to think about the message that was common to all- humans are causing some animals to be endangered, but humans are also helping the animals, too.
We then reviewed the three different kinds of writing- informational, opinion, and narrative and reviewed their characteristics. We also reviewed the best way to plan for each kind of writing.
Students then got to pick to which prompt they wanted to respond. Then they planned and started writing!
Planning for an opinion is done best using box and bullets. Your opinion goes in the box and reasons or examples become your bullets. The bullets should have parallel structure (one example, another example).
Planning for an informational piece should have an introduction, chapter titles or section headings, and a conclusion.
Planning for a narrative should include SWBST (Somebody Wanted But So Then).
This was great review for the Mstep test next week. Students are going to have to read two articles and use those articles to write to an informational prompt, opinion prompt, or narrative prompt.