Since I began teaching the WBT way, whenever I am thinking about how I am going to introduce a new concept to my students, there are two words that I always keep in mind: engaging and funtricity (a WBT buzz word). I know that these two things will always lead to student learning, so I want them to be at the heart of all of my lessons.
Last week my writing focus skill was proper nouns. In the past my introductory lesson for proper nouns included a lot of brainstorming. Whole class brainstorming did not seem to fit into my new WBT criteria for lesson planning, so I decided to think of another way to teach it. I wanted something that would make proper nouns exciting and keep all of the students engaged. After some thought, I decided that the Complexor Game would work great with proper nouns.
The Complexor Game is part of the Whole Brain Teaching Writing game, which can be downloaded from the WBT website. The Complexor game breaks down writing into very small skills. Each complexor focuses on a different skill. Examples of complexors are subject verb agreement, making a list with commas, using the word because correctly in a sentence ... And the list goes on. Teachers print off the Complexor that they want to use and give a copy to each of their students. The complexors provide a sample sentence frame and a sentence frame for the students to orally fill in. The best part, however, are the word lists at the bottom of each complexor. Students can no longer say that they can't think of anything, because a number of different options for filling in each sentence frame are already provided. Students simply need to choose from the list the ones that they like.
Every student works with a partner. In my class the partners are called Peanut Butters and Jellies. Peanut Butters always go first. Their job is to create as many sentences as they can in one minute using the sentence frame provided, while Jellies use their whiteboards to keep track of their partners' scores. Each correct sentence is one point, and in my class students can not earn that point unless they use the target Brainies. I choose the target Brainies based upon the Complexor we are doing. For example, if the Complexor is on the correct use of the word "and", then students are expected to use the "and" Brainie when they are creating their sentences. I always tell the scorekeepers to watch carefully, and to only award a point if the target Brainie is being used. After one minute their scores are tallied and they are given a second minute to try and beat their previous score. They love this! Of course, if they beat their previous score, their partner will give them a ten finger Wooh. Roles are then reversed, and the same process is repeated.
Although proper nouns is not a Complexor within the Writing Game, I decided to use the Complexor game format to teach it. I began by putting three posters on the board. One had days of the week, one had months of the year, and the third had holidays. I started my lesson on proper nouns with the Question/Answer format from the WBT five step lesson plan. I then showed my students the list of the days of the week and explained that days of the week are proper nouns and they must always be capitalized. Students were then asked to create sentences using the days of the week. I emphasized using the capital Brainie when they said the day of the week within their sentence, because it is a proper noun and must be capitalized. After a few examples, the students were ready to play. Students then used the format I described above for the complexor game with their days of the week sentences. For every correct sentence using capital Brainies, students received one point. Students were very good about watching for capital Brainies and correcting each other if they didn't use them. I then repeated the same process for months of the year and holidays. It was a lot of fun.
I also wanted to introduce students to names as a proper noun, but I decided that this was a little too broad for the Complexor game, so I had the students take out their "Yes/No cards". These are simply laminatd notecards. One side is colored green and has the word yes written on it. The other side is colored red and has the word no written on it. I introduced the name rule and then simply said a word, such as Target. If students thought the word should be capitalized, they held up the yes side when I said, "Show me." If they thought the word should not be capitalized, they held up the no side instead. This allowed me to see who had the idea and who needed extra help.
The next day I wanted to see how well my students could transfer what they had learned about proper nouns to their writing, so we had the "Proper Noun Challenge". I gave students fifteen minutes to write as many sentences as they could using proper nouns. I had the posters up from the day before, and I encouraged the class to think of the sentences that they had shared with their partners the previous day during the Complexor Game. Every time they used a proper noun, they had to underline it. I walked around with a red pen and green pen, circling in green any proper noun I saw that were underlined, and circling in red any word that was underlined/capitalized and shouldn't be, or any proper noun that was not capitalized. At the end of fifteen minutes, students counted up the number of proper nouns that they had. The person who used the most proper nouns in their writing got a 100 finger sizzling Wooh with firecrackers. It was very exciting!
Remember, any lesson can be made engaging and fun. It just takes a little thought and a little creativity. I am finding that the more I do it, the easier it becomes. Just remember, when you are planning your lessons, always think of engaging funtricity and you can never go wrong.
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