A trip to Animal Park

Last Saturday, my Grandpa and Grandma took me and my little brother Aiden to lazy 5 ranch to feed the animal.

When we just got there, at the entrance it looked like a grassy field and a few camels.  We didn't see people.

We found out the animals not in the drive thru such as the peacock,  turkey were full. We threw food at them but they didn't eat. If you go to the drive through, they want you to  feed the animals. We saw lamb, baby deer, lama, zebra and Emu. The animals came close when they see the car coming. They sniffed around the car window to search for food and a lama even left bb on my car window, Yuck! If  the  window was closed, they went to  the next car. When I hold the food in the bucket and reached out from the car for the Emu, I almost dropped the bucket! I was afraid it would peck me with its beak but it didn't. There were lambs that weren't tall enough to reach the bucket, so I threw the food to the ground for them to eat.

I  was getting carsick after the ride and I threw out 4, 5 times.

Before we left, the animals were full because they were resting and sitting.

Anchor paper (Grade 1): Description

What is your classroom at school look like? Write a description of your classroom for your teacher. Tell what you see, hear and feel.

My classroom is a neat place! The desk and chairs are in small groups. My teacher's desk is made of metal. Her desk is by the round art table. There are six tall windows. Four bushy plants grow by the window. I like the reading corner the best. It has many books, a bright blue rugs and soft pillows.

Sometimes my classroom is as quiet as an ant. I can hear the clock tick. Sometimes the classroom is very noisy. You would like my classroom too!

words collection

words for weather:

Sleet  Rain  Cloudy  Overcast  Sunny Snowy  Rainy  Tornato  Thunderstorm Windy  humid  foggy warm  hot  cool  cold

words/phrases for smile:
Grin  laugh  beaming  smile ear to ear  giggle

phases described the "nervous"

Teeth chatter

Use crayons to teach color word thesaurus

Books to teach 6 traits

Many teachers utilize Jane O’Connor’s Fancy Nancy to teach word choice and target precise language. It’s a fabulous picture book for the trait of word choice. But many have asked for a “boy book” that targets the same word choice skills but is a little less girly. Found it! White Oak Elementary (Avon, IN) teacher Amy Stowers shared with me two fabulous alternatives. I Stink and I’m Dirty (both books by Kate & Jim McMullan) use trucks as main characters. Within I’m Dirty, the dump truck is decked out with “steel arms, hydraulic rams, and a specialized, maximized, giant-sized loader bucket.” What word choice! The whole book’s like that. You’ll love them both.

How strong is your vocabulary?

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Beginning & Ending

Let’s dive into the second most common reason students don’t pass — their writing lacks cohesiveness or completeness. In other words, they don’t have the 3-part combination including a beginning, middle, and end. They may have a beginning (or hook sentence), but after developing the middle, the piece just stops with a canned one-liner, like “The End” or “That’s all I know. Hope you liked my story,” or “Good-bye,” or “Thank you for reading this.”

If your writers are not habitually writing beginnings and endings for their middles, it’s time to make that a specific focus of instruction.

Teach the beginning & ending as one component, not two separate ones. Target beginnings and endings as a single unit. Offer students a structure for creating beginnings and endings. One idea is to encourage them to use the same type of beginning and ending. For example, if the writing begins with action, it can end with action. If it starts with a sound effect, it can end with a sound effect. If it begins with sensory description, then it can end with sensory description.

Describe this as the yo-yo effect. Releasing the yo-yo represents the beginning. The spinning at the bottom of the string represents the middle. And the yo-yo spiraling back up to the user’s hand represents the ending. However you start, you can end. However you send the yo-yo down, bring it back up the same way.

To help students get some practice with this concept I start by sharing an oral story about a bike crash I experienced:

I was riding my new bike faster and faster. Then, all of a sudden, my wheel hit a pothole and I went flying. End over end I somersaulted in the air. When I touched down again, I didn’t just crash. I slid. I skid. I skimmed across the road. When I came to a stop, my elbows and knees were bleeding. My hands hurt.

Consider the above to be the “middle” of a piece of writing. Use this same “middle” over and over, while orally reciting several different beginning/ending combinations. Some examples might include:

1. Intense Action

Beginning: I was pedaling fast down Hicker Hill on my brand new bike. My legs were going around and around. I remember picking up speed with every rotation.

Middle: Reference the crash.

Ending: It took a long time to hobble back up the hill, hauling my bike parts. There was a throbbing pain in my palms. They were scraped and raw, with speckles of gravel buried in them. Man, did they burn!

2. Sensory Description

Beginning: My new bike reflected the sunshine; it bounced off the shiny chrome trim. There was a white, plastic basket with seven, dainty purple flowers on the front. I swung my leg over it and began my first ride.

Middle: Reference the crash.

Ending: But, no matter how banged up I was, you should have seen my not-so-new bike. The chrome was dented. The paint was chipped. The basket was dangling from the handlebars, with only one purple flower remaining.

3. Intriguing Question

Beginning: Did you ever feel like you were flying? I have — the day I zoomed down Hicker Hill on my brand new bike.

Middle: Reference the crash.

Ending: Well, all I can say is you’ve seen a bird fly and crash into a window before, haven’t you?

4. Mood-Setting Emotion

Beginning: What a great day for bike riding! The sun was shining. The air was crisp. I was ready to hit the road, just me and my new bike.

Middle: Reference the crash.

Ending: It all went wrong, terribly wrong. All I want to do now is dump this bike in the garage and forget this day forever.

5. Sound Effect/Onomatopoeia

Beginning: WHIZ! The trees were behind me. WHIZ! I zoomed past a parked car. WHIZ! WHIZ! WHIZ! I passed mailboxes one by one. No one could catch me on my brand new bike.

Middle: Reference the crash.

Ending: CLINK! CLANK! CLUNK! The chain from my bike rhythmically banged against the bent fender, as I hauled my once-new bike back to the house.

The greatest advantage to such a technique is that students are immediately thinking of their ending before they even write the beginning. They know where their pieces are going. Producing a “meaningful whole” with a beginning, middle, and end is essential for on-demand writing.

This can be incorporated into primary-grade writing, too. This concept of tying the beginning and ending together is applicable even for young writers. Although it may not be a multi-sentence beginning with a multi-sentence ending, a single sentence is definitely doable.