A Turkey's Plea

We just finished parent-teacher conferences this week...yay! I was able to get lesson plans done all the way up through the end of the month, which feels fantastic. Here is the activity that I'm most excited for next week:

 

I'll start the lesson by reading My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza. It's an adorable story about a pig who outsmarts a fox by giving the fox different reasons why the fox shouldn't eat him. It's the perfect lead in to persuasive writing. 

  

When I teach writing, I use an "I do, then you do" method. This allows me to model writing techniques and talk through my thinking process. I have a blank graphic organizer like the one below and all of my students do too. I fill in a section and then I let them fill in the section. I let students share so that reluctant writers can hear variations and different ideas. Hopefully it spurs an idea within them.
 

 

Here's what mine might look like when I'm finished. Theirs should be similar, but with their own ideas. 

 

 

After this planning stage, we write rough drafts. I also model this for them using the graphic organizer that I completed the first day. It allows me to share my thought processes as I take information from the organizer and turn it into complete sentences. 

After rough drafts we revise our own work and then have peers proofread for us. I  have a checklist that I hand out to each student. 

Then we write our final drafts and share our work. I'm going to have students write their final drafts on the paper below.   

You can find all of these resources, along with the revising checklist and a brief 5 day sample lesson plan here.