Welcome to HIT—How I Teach….In episode #20, I explain how to choose a passage to give your students as a writing source. Moreover, I explain what a writing source should look like for your students—from the number of paragraphs to the complexity of the sentences, from the outlining spaces to the symbols a student can use in their outlines.
(You will get a four paragraph source from the story of Dumbo, outlining lines that go with that source, and a complete Checklist Challenge—so you can use the Teacher’s Notebook writing lesson for your third through sixth graders!)
Here are some of the highlights from this week’s broadcast:
- Pre-cursors to having students write from lengthier passages: Writing Boxes (available for free in HIT #3) and using a How To Write From a Given Source lesson (available for free in HIT #5)
- Choosing an appropriate number of paragraphs for your students’ writing level
- Making writing from one source multi-level
- Determining “write-ability” levels, not just readability levels
- Making clear paragraph distinctions within the source you create
- Using a sample outline and paragraph re-write—or doing a paragraph outline and writing on the board together before they write from the rest of the source
- Creating clear outlining lines to go with the source you are creating
- Using the “Topic of Paragraph Line” to teach beginning paragraph division
- Teaching students to use the minimum number of words in an outline
- Using symbols in place of words in an outline
- Teaching a method of outlining that students stick with in order to avoid plagiarism
- Much more!
It’s all here in this week’s HIT—where each week, I bring you tips, tricks, and techniques for teaching writing, language arts, grammar, and more (to grades two through twelve) drawing upon my 100+ curriculum books totaling over 50,000 pages.
And for your convenience, How I Teach…. is available as a podcast (follow along in your TN sheets for that week) and a YouTube video (with Power Point containing the same as the TN)!
Of course, just like every lesson in my one-month downloadable books and my one-semester Meaningful Composition books, this one also has the invaluable sample paragraph.
Note: This lesson came from Write for a Month, Dumbo, Level II, a month-long downloadable book!
Find everything you need here!
Weekly broadcast episodes with Teacher’s Notebook downloads (and links to listen or watch!) at the Language Arts Lady blog
Master (continually updated) Teacher’s Notebook downloadable booklet
Free writing books and videos of me teaching your students for you for a couple of weeks!
All of my digital books
How I Teach YouTube Channel
How I Teach Podcast
