organizing an animal report by first brainstorming precise nouns
This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Northern Nevada teacher Amy Benham at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.
The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book We Are Bears by Molly Grooms. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.
Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.
Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :
Pre-step (before sharing the published model):Conduct a little lesson on how to turn verbs into nouns. You can list interesting animal-related nouns on the board (burrow, cat-nap, climb, protect, consume, hibernate, etc.) and then explain how to turn them into nouns (burrower, cat-napper, climber, protector, consumer, hibernator.)
Later for this assignment, when your students are researching animals for their reports, they might think of pretty common verbs to associate with their animals (like run). You might conduct a little lesson on synonyms, showing them how pursue or scamper might make better choices for their brainstorms.
Step one (sharing the published model):Throughout Molly Grooms' story We Are Bears, the author uses precise and interesting nouns to describe bears. The author has chosen these nouns in order to teach younger students all about bears, their habitats and their habits. Children will be captivated by the beautiful illustrations of a mother black bear and her two cubs and the smooth gentle pace of the story. Teachers should stress, as
they read We Are Bears, what the author has done particularly well in writing this story: in this case, Molly Grooms has chosen precise and interesting nouns to describe her beloved bears. We discover that bears are climbers, searchers, swimmers, diggers, and sleepers.
Grooms has also jammed her book full of factual information regarding the bears’ habitat and habits, food sources and behaviors. (To further stress Grooms' use of precise nouns, you may also want to read We Are Wolves.)
This writing activity requires students to research an animal (other than a bear) and discover interesting and precise nouns that could be used to describe their animal. They will organize a report that uses these precise nouns as introductions or conclusions to each of their report's parts.
Step two (introducing models of writing): In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson. The groups will certainly talk about the word choice, since that's the focus of this lesson, but you might prompt your students to talk about each model's organization as well.
We're looking for student samples for all grade levels for this prompt! Help us get some, and we'll send you free books for your classroom! Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.
Step three (thinking and pre-writing): First, students will need to choose an animal that interests them enough to do some research on. If your class is studying a certain habitat, then you can assign them animals, or you can let students freely choose. The interactive button game on the Student Instructions Pageis designed to help your students self-choose an animal and start thinking about interesting nouns.
As students research, they are to gather a certain assigned number of interesting and precise nouns about their animals. These nouns need to be animal-specific (as opposed to habitat-specific). For very young students, you can assign students to discover two or three nouns. Older student can probably handle five or six, like Grooms' book on bears features. Some nouns might jump out from the research (carnivore, for example), but others may have to be created from verbs the students discover about their animals. When the nouns are created from verbs, they are more likely to be animal-specific.
Remind students once more that an animal's unique verbs can be turned into nouns (usually with just an -er suffix), and then let them gather their nouns. It might be a good idea to require them to gather extra nouns so that they can choose their best nouns to put on the graphic organizer. You might let them gather their nouns just on a blank piece of paper, then let them select their best nouns to put on the graphic organizer.
This one-page graphic organizer allows for students to think about three nouns. If you are requiring students to use more nouns than that, just give them multiple copies of this pre-writing worksheet. The second page of the G.O. has an example that shows how one column should look, when it's filled out. As students fill out their researched facts in the box provided, encourage them to put facts into their own words.
Be sure to tell your students up front how many columns they will need to fill out in order to have "enough" research for their reports. Again, younger students might be fine with just two columns filled out, while older students might need two (or more) copies of the graphic organizer.
With the organizer's columns filled out, students are ready to begin planning their reports' paragraphs or parts. Each paragraph or part needs to be about one of their columns of facts. Each paragraph or part should either begin or end with "We are [researched noun]" or "[Animal Name] are [researched noun.]" So if it was a report on bears, each section of the report will either begin or end with "We are gainers" or "Black bears are gainers."
Once students have each of their report's parts rough-drafted, two great conversations about the trait of organization can happen. First, talk about pacing; ask students to double-check to be sure that each part of their rough drafts has an equal amount of facts and a fairly equal amount of words. A student with one fact in one part and nine facts in another part will not have a report that has been well-paced. Second, require students to think about sequencing by asking them to spread out the parts of their reports and talking about which order it would make the most sense to present their reports' parts.
Have students assemble their reports' parts into one rough draft.
Step four (revising with specific trait language): Two tools for revision are provided below. To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts. Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5." Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.
Step five (editing for conventions): After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor. If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers. With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it. The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.
Step six (publishing for the portfolio): When they are finished revising and have second drafts, require students to create a final draft. Students will probably enjoy creating original illustrations for this report as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.
Interested in publishing student work on-line? We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original reports at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers. This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.
Check out all of Molly Grooms' books
by clicking here!
