This Lesson's Title:

A Scientific
Mishap

organizing a story with purposeful paragraphs

This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Dena Harrison. Check out all of Dena's online writing lessons by clicking here.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Dogzilla by Dav Pilkey. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out Dogzilla at Amazon.com.

Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

After enjoying the clever title and humorous writing style of Dav Pilkey's Dogzilla, students will imagine what type of scientific lab mishap created Pilkey's title character. Then, they will brainstorm other interesting creatures that might be created during scientific lab accidents. Using this lesson's graphic organizer, students will create a three-part story that tells the story of a scientific mishap that leads to the creation of a new creature. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is organization; this writing prompt comes with a graphic organizer that will require writers to pre-plan paragraphs that have a purpose.  The support trait in this assignment is idea development; strong details that use action verbs and powerful adjectives should be encouraged.

Recipient of the NNWP's
Excellent Writing Lesson Award:

Because of the quality of its resources and ideas, this WritingFix lesson was selected by the Northern Nevada Writing Project as May 2007's Writing Lesson of the Month. It was e-mailed to thousands of teachers who are members of the NNWP's Writing Lesson of the Month Teacher Network.

To find out how to become a member of this free network, click here to visit the NNWP's webpage. You can have a link to a high-quality writing lesson sent to you every month.