lego story starter. turn and talk what are some of the essential questions pertaining to writing...

Lego Story Starter

Turn and Talk

What are some of the essential questions pertaining to writing instruction?

At your grade level, what are your students’ strengths in writing?

What challenges you when you teach writing?

What do you do to combat writer’s block?

Objective

Today we will investigate best practices in the use Lego Story Starter in order to design and deliver writing instruction which is student-centered, developmentally appropriate, and motivating.

Sample Activity

Why?

Lego Story Starter

As pre-writing within the context

of the writing process

Facilitates Organization

Paper product

Digital product

As a response to reading

Promotes deeper thinking

As a collaborative brainstorming activity in a content area

Makes ideas more concrete

1) What? – Narrative Writing

The Narrative Task broadens the way in which students may use this type of writing. Narrative writing can be used to convey experiences or events, real or imaginary. In this task, students may be asked to write a story,  detail a scientific process, write a historical account of important figures, or to describe an account of events, scenes or objects.

When? Learn to Write by Writing

Craft (word choice, voice, ideas, organization)Conventions (text layout, grammar, capitalization,

punctuation, spelling, handwriting, word processing)Writing Process (rehearsing and planning; drafting and

revising; editing and proofreading; publishing; sketching and drawing; viewing self as a writer)

When? Instructional Activities

• Investigations: Use reading, writing, and multiple media resources including technology to explore and research topics in-depth. Provide explicit instruction to explore written language and make connections between reading and writing.

• Independent Writing: Mini-lesson followed by students engaged in writing during which teacher will confer with students about their writings.

• Guided/Small group Writing: homogeneous, small, temporary groups based on students’ interests and/or needs.

Getting Started

How? Experience a lesson from the guide

Setting the StageModelGuided practiceTime for collaborative workSummarize / Synthesize individuallyReflect

Curriculum Pack

How? Make up your own activity

EngageModelGuided practiceTime for collaborative workSummarize / Synthesize individuallyReflect

Story Stems

Reflect

With The Kit Without the Kit

Story Stems

Extension 1: Writing About ReadingReading Response JournalAnalysis

The Literature Task

plays an important role in

honing students’ ability to

read complex text closely, a

skill that research reveals as the

most significant factor

differentiating college-ready

from non-college-ready readers.

This task will ask students to

carefully consider literature

worthy of close study and

compose an analytic essay

-PARCC

Reading Comprehension of Key Ideas and Details *Notes: The type of textual evidence required is grade and prompt specific and included in the scoring guide.

Score Point 3:The student response provides an accurate analysis of what the text says explicitly and inferentially and references the text explicitly to support the analysis, showing full comprehension of complex ideas expressed in the text(s).

Extension 2: Digital Publication

Final product can be a story, blog, poem, article, newsletter, brochure, photo story, movie, stop motion video, or webpage

Publication tools Site license of Visualizer software

Standard applications (Microsoft Word, Microsoft Publisher, Wixie, Voicethread, Windows Movie Maker, Kidblog, Edmodo, Weebly)

Visualizer Tutorial