At IST we use 6-Traits Writing. This year we have already covered concepts in 5 of the writing traits (the easier ones,) but grade 3 is the first time we teach and asses the concept of "voice" and I still had not introduced this skill. This is a difficult concept for children to understand and master in their writing so I wracked my brain to come up with a fun way to teach it.
During planning a few weeks ago, I thought of an exciting way to teach "voice" using character cards (cards with different story characters printed on them.) The focus concepts were:
- using describing words to tell about a character
- using dialogue with proper use of quotation marks
- different words for the word said
- adding "voice" to stories
I chose a character card and out it up on my Smartboard using my document camera. The students and I then put describing words around the character to give them an identity. After that, we wrote 3 sentences using dialogue for what this character would say in a story. After I modeled for them and we did the task together, the students got to draw a character of their own, create describing words for that character, write dialogue for them and then create a story about their character. We used the printable below to complete this task. It turned out to be a successful introduction to the concept of writing with "voice."
No comments:
Post a Comment