This Lesson's Title:

Launching a Fantastic Voyage

organizing the start of a
sci-fi-like adventure

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Cathy Guild at an AT&T-sponsored in-service class for teachers.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially excerpts from the first seven chapters.

Check out A Wrinkle in Time at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Just as Madeleine L’Engle wrote her characters their own fantastic journey in A Wrinkle in Time, students will write about a fantastic journey from their own imaginations.  Students will choose interesting characters, an unusual mode of transportation, and a destination that is somehow amazing, extraordinarily beautiful, terrifying or ominous.  This assignment requires them to use details to create a balance of showing and telling skills as well as incorporating interesting adjectives and strong verbs to keep the sentences compelling and interesting to read. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; the writers goal is to create sentences that use a balance of showing and telling skills as well as choosing interesting, high-quality details when describing their characters, setting and mode of transportation.  The support trait in this assignment is organization; the graphic organizer has students brainstorm ideas and plan purposeful paragraphs before writing.