When I was at the Beijing teacher's conference I went to a workshop that focused alot on the writing process and the six traits of writing. The speaker had SO many practical ideas that I was able to put into action right when I returned to school that following week. In one writing workshop mini-lesson, I was able to teach my kids the concept of brainstorming, creating, fixing, adding, changing, and even commenting. Guess what we used......playdough! When we transfered the activity into showing that they do all of these things as writers, I could see the light bulbs turn on in their heads...there were a lot of "hey...wait a minute" comments going on around the room :)
First I gave each of them a ball of playdough and a paper plate. I said "create something...anything." After a while, I said "now add something to your creation." After they added their creative touches, I said "now change or remove something" (you could hear the sad sighs). After a few more steps and touches, I had them write a title to their creation on the top. When everyone was satisfied with what they had made, we cycled the paper plates through the classroom for the students to write comments to their playdough masterpieces. It was so adorable how they really got into this part! They had so many questions, and wondering comments to write down that the plate filled up rather quickly (aside from the simple fact that 1st grade students write very big). After looking at their recieved comments, they went back and made some changes so that their "lookers" (future readers) would not be confused. Here's how our published playdough masterpieces turned out:
Dumplings
"Who will eat that?"
"Where is the spoon?"
Spot Muddy"Why is the mud pink?"
"Oh no! You wrote on the playdough!"
Play ball Monster
"Where is the face?"
"What is his favorite ball?"
"Is it a scary monster?"
The Gingerbread Man
"Why is he brown?"
"Why does he not have ears?"
Here is a picture of our writing process pencil. This (hopefully) helps to keep their writing all flowing together in one general direction.
