Sentence Maker	The Titles are in the Bag	Teaching Personification	Color-Coded Paragraphs
Creative Writing	Miscellaneous	Miscellaneous	Miscellaneous

MATERIALS:

• flash cards

METHOD:

1. Are your students' sentences a mess? Tired of doing the same exercises over and over again? Here is a simple activity to revise spelling, verb tenses and vocabulary. Just decide on the structure you want to deal with, give your pupils a couple of examples... and they'll work hard (and enjoy it, too!) The activity may be done with the whole class or in small groups, depending on needs and circumstances.

 

2. The students write a number of flash cards and make sentences with them. These contain the articles, the subject pronouns, the possessive adjectives and the nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives and adverbs you think fit. Let your pupils add pictures where possible! Notice the following:

 

The Present Simple Tense

 

SUBJECT + VERB + .............

 

Ann can swim / Tom is a doctor / They are happy

Charles has got a dog / The girls have got some books

He likes chocolates / My brothers speak French / Mary drives carefully

 

3. You can do wonders with 200 cards or even less than that! Students get organized and write 10/15 cards each, to begin with. This could either be set as homework beforehand or done in class on the same day . Make sure all necessary categories are used. Teacher can always suggest/add new words.

Shuffle the cards and pile them on a desk in such a way that students cannot see the text or the pictures. Decide how long you want to devote to the game itself (15-30 minutes) In turns, students. take one or more cards from the pile and try making sentences using at least 3 words. If the sentence is correct, the student wins 5 points. Cards that have been used go to the bottom of the pile. Add new words now and again! The student with the most points wins the game.

 

4. For your students' benefit, the cards containing verbs should include S or ES when dealing with The Present Simple. For the same reason, add ING when dealing with The Present Continuous and indicate whether the verb is regular or irregular when dealing with The Simple Past (or even give students the past form straight away!)

EXAMPLES:

You can use any words you like. The following are just a few suggestions:

 

ARTICLES: a, an, the.

 

POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES: my, your, his, her, its, our, their.

 

SUBJECT PRONOUNS: I, you, he, she, it, we, they.

 

NOUNS: bananas, bed, beer, bicycle, birds, books, boyfriend, brother, bus, butter, cabbage, cake, cat, car, chair, children, chocolates, day, doctor, dog, door, ducks, English, film, flat, floor, food, French, friends, girlfriend, hands, home, homework, horse, house, jacket, jeans, John, Italian, lake, lesson, letter, lion, London, man, mansion, medicine, men, milk, mother, motorbike, Mr Smith, Mrs Jones, neighbors, news, newspaper, novel, opera, park, pizza, policeman, policewoman, problem, radio, record, school, sea, shirt, sister, sofa, song, soup, story, street, students, swimming pool, tea, telegram, thief, thieves, time, tomato, TV, water, window, wine, woman, women, zoo.

 

VERBS: be (include am, are, is - was, were) build, buy, can, catch, close, die, do, draw, drink, drive, eat, feed, go, grow, hate, have got (include has got), hit, kill, learn, like, listen, love, make, read, ride, run, sell, send, shake, shut, sing, sit, sleep, speak, spread, steal, swim, take, teach, tell, understand, watch, wear, work, write.

 

ADJECTIVES: beautiful, bad, big, cheap, expensive, fat, good, green, nice, old, small, terrible, thin, ugly, young.

 

ADVERBS: a lot of, always, dangerously, fast, here, never, now, often, quickly, slowly, sometimes, there, this morning, today, well, yesterday.

 

PREPOSITIONS: along, at, behind, beside, between, from, in, on, of, over, under, through.  
 

THE TITLES ARE IN THE BAG

This lesson helps to stimulate creative writing and provide for interesting titles.

MATERIALS:

• brightly colored pieces of paper in 3 colors
• lined paper for writing
• 3 ziploc plastic baggies

METHOD:

1. To spark creative writing and to lessen students' anxiety about creative writing I put fragments of titles in plastic baggies for students to choose. One bag holds nouns or noun phrases. One bag holds adjectives or adjective phrases. The third bag (used later in the school year) holds verbs and verb phrases. Each group is written on one brightly colored paper.
2. For example, in my class the nouns are written on shocking pink paper. Papers are hold several times and then placed in the baggies. The first year you do this will require some work but then you are all set for following years. (I have used my sets for 5 years.) You need to write about 40 nouns on separate pieces of paper and fold them over. I use common objects for this writing activity. Some examples are: lamp, toothbrush, vacuum cleaner, baseball bat, couch, scissors, fish tank, etc. You need to have more choices to pick from than you have children in the class so that everyone is involved in selecting.
3. The next baggie is full of adjectives and are written on a different color or papers. Some examples are; purple spotted, lazy, old and moldy, yellow striped, ugly, gigantic, miniature, etc. Once again you need to have about 40 of these for ample selections.
4. I save the verbs until later in the year when students are familiar and comfortable with this activity. Verb examples are: ran away from home, flew into outer space, got lost at the mall, fell apart, when horseback riding, etc.
5. Take the baggies of nouns and adjectives around the class. Students are to take one piece of paper from each baggie. The child reads aloud the 2 papers together to make a title. (This will cause a lot of laughter!) I allow each child to have one opportunity to place one of the 2 pieces of paper back into the baggie and draw out one other paper. They read aloud the new title. Everyone listens to all of the titles before starting to write.
6. Some examples of titles that I have wound up with are: The Pink and Purple Spotted Refrigerator, The Ugly Pencil Sharpener, The Gigantic Dog Bone, A. Rubbery, Bouncy Toaster--With the addition of verb phrases: The Pink and Purple Spotted Refrigerator that Cried, The Ugly Pencil Sharpener that Ran a Marathon, The Gigantic Dog Bone that Flew Around the World, A. Rubbery, Bouncy Toaster that Chased a Cat
7. Allow 1 or 2 days to complete this writing. I have about 5 or 6 kids volunteer to read their stories aloud. These stories can be saved and at the end of the year the students can put together a book of their own writings. Illustrations are terrific to use!

I DO NOT grade these writings or write all over them with a red pen. The objective is to encourage creativity and ease fears that the teacher is more creative and more knowledgeable about writing.  
 

TEACHING PERSONIFICATION THROUGH LITERATURE

Teaching personification to children can be difficult, but Jan Brett's books make it very easy and fun.

MATERIALS:

• Armadillo Rodeo, by Jan Brett
• Comet's Nine Lives, by Jan Brett
• Berlioz, The Bear, by Jan Brett
• pencil
• video of commercials
• paper
• story web poster
• story web handouts

METHOD:

1. Before the lesson, prepare a video with several commercials that show personification. Some good ones are M&M 's, Snuggle, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. Tell the students they are going to watch some commercials and to look for something that all the commercials have in common. The students will try to conclude that all of the commercials have objects that are doing human things. Explain that this is called personification.
2. Put the definition of personification up on the board. (personification - when an inanimate object takes on human characteristics) Ask the students to name some other places they have seen personification. Explain that personification is commonly found in literature.
3. Introduce the book, Armadillo Rodeo by Jan Brett. Tell the students to look and listen for examples of personification as you are reading the book to them. Read the book with lots of expression, talking about interesting points as you come to them. As a class, list the many examples of personification that the children saw and heard.
4. Explain to the students that they will now be looking at another book of Jan Brett's for some examples of personification. Place the students into small groups. Give each group a Jan Brett book. The students will read the book in their small groups. Then, as a group, they will list as many examples of personification from the book as they can. The students will then share their finding with the class.
5. Using their knowledge of personification, the students will begin writing their own stories utilizing this technique. Give each student a story web handout. Model the proper way to pre write for a story by using your story web poster. As you fill-in your story web, allow each student to fill-in his/her story web. Stress to the students that they should be using their own ideas not the ideas that you are using on your story web.
6. After the students have finished prewriting, allow them to begin writing their rough drafts. The students should finish these for homework.
7. The next day, set the students up in pairs and have them do peer editing. When, the students have finished editing their papers. They should begin their final copies.
Allow the students to share their final copies with the class. Finally, you could send the final copies to Jan Brett. Brett's address can be found on her web page  
 

COLOR-CODED PARAGRAPHS

By using the color-coded paragraph strategy, students will write clear, organized paragraphs with a title, topic sentence, supporting detail sentences, and a conclusion. After several activities, students will write paragraphs in cooperative groups.

MATERIALS:

• diagram of a wheel with four parts
• model paragraphs
• chart paper
• for each group: four different colored pencils, one strip of green paper, one strip of red paper, four strips of blue paper, one strip of yellow (all strips should be one inch wide), one piece of construction paper and a glue stick.

METHOD:

1. After discussing what students know about paragraphs, use charts to relate parts of a paragraph to a wheel. Each student should be given a copy of a paragraph and a picture of a wheel. Sentences should be underlined with the same color markers that you used to color related parts of the wheel. Color the hub green and underline the title with the same color. Color the axle red and underline the main idea with the red marker. Color the four spokes blue and underline the supporting sentences blue. Finally, color the rim yellow and underline the concluding sentence yellow.
2. Students read and color the parts of several teacher selected paragraphs independently.
3. Teacher models and elicits oral paragraphs with the whole class. The main idea should be selected by the teacher and written with a red marker. The class will continue writing the paragraph using colored markers and by following the above style.
4. Students will write their own group paragraph. Each group will be given one strip of green paper, one strip of red paper, four strips of blue paper, and one strip of yellow paper. After deciding on a main idea for their group paragraph. one student will write this idea on the red strip. Every group member will write a detail sentence on a blue strip. Together, the group will decide on a conclusion which will be written on the yellow strip. The leader will write a title on the green strip. Glue all strips on a large sheet of construction paper in the correct order.
Students will share their paragraphs with the class. During the sharing, the students in each group read the part that they wrote.  
 

CREATIVE WRITING

MATERIALS:

• paper
• crayons
• pencil

METHOD:

1. While the students are seated at their desks, take off one of your shoes and look at it and say, "I just want to take a moment to appreciate my shoes. They take me to so many places, but often I do not even realize they are with me accompanying me through a voyage." Hold the shoe in the air and say, "I declare the next few minuets Official Shoe Appreciation Day." Then tell the class, to honor our shoes we will each describe our shoe, write a paragraph about our shoe, and finally draw a picture of our shoe."
2. Instruct the class to take off one shoe.
3. Next, have the children write a sentences describing their shoes. Then have them each read their sentences. (Write some things about each students shoe on the board.)
4. Have the students write a sloppy copy about the best or worst place their shoes have taken them.
5. Check the story to correct errors. Then, give the students a final copy to write their stories on and to draw a picture of their shoe on.
Once all papers are turned in, put your shoe on and say, "Shoe appreciation day is officially over, please put your shoes back on." Then tell the class, "Today we were creative and wrote descriptive paragraphs about our shoes. This just proves if you can write about a shoe you can write about anything!"