Welcome to this Lesson:

The Important Thing about
Idea Development:
Specific and Memorable Details

three or four memorable details to teach basic paragraphing skills

This lesson idea was proposed to WritingFix by NNWP Teacher Consultant Kim Polson.

The mentor text:

The Important Book by Margaret Wise Brown provides a wonderful, basic structure that students can impersonate with ease.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

The Important Book, written by Margaret Wise Brown, provides a very specific writing pattern that even the youngest of writers can imitate.  Requiring these types of patterns for writing tasks provides safety for all students, and when students feel safe, they can explore things (like details in writing) with less anxiety.  This on-line prompt has students learn and toy with the pattern, so they can use The Important Book's simple pattern throughout a school year, applying it to things they've learned in any content area. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; the writer's goal is to compose and prioritize memorable details as they write about their chosen or assigned topic.  The support trait in this assignment is organization; students create paragraphs about topics while writing to this prompt, and both linking introductions to conclusions and sequencing can be discussed to build better organizational skills.