Common Core Curriculum and the Genius Ladder

I love the Genius Ladder!  It is one of the core components of the Whole Brain Teaching writing classroom.  If you are not familiar with what the Genius Ladder is or how to use it, please see my post entitled The Genius Ladder before reading any further.  There you will find a full description of what the Genius Ladder is and how to use it within your classroom.  I have been using the Genius ladder faithfully since the second week of school.  I have always chosen the content of my ladder based upon what type of extender I wanted to use.  I began with the because clapper.  From there I moved on to phrases that answered the questions "when" and "where".  Next, it was on to prepositional phrases.  I then taught my class how to form compound sentences.  Most recently, my class learned how to use the conjunction "but".

I could have easily continued making my ladders based upon the type of extender I wanted to use, but recently I decided to try something different.  I decided to build my ladder around our common core content.  With the Common Core, the rigor our curriculum has definitely increased.  Students no longer just need to know the answer.  They also need to be able to explain their reasoning in writing.  I decided that the Genius Ladder would provide the perfect framework for students to do just that. I also made the decision to combine this use of the Genius Ladder with Red/Green Writing.  This made perfect sense to me, since one of the topics that students are encouraged to write about during Red/Green Writing is what they have learned about that day.  The Genius Ladder would simply provide more structure.

The first step was to decide which standard to use first within the ladder.  In math we are learning how to subtract with regrouping to the tens place.  Any second grade teacher who has ever taught their students how to do this knows how challenging this can be.  Students need to understand when and why they take a ten from the tens place and trade it in for ones.  It was upon this premise that I built the day's Genius Ladder.  Below is a picture of what it looked like.

The first level, the Blah level, simply says, "The student traded in a ten for ten ones."  At the spicy level I asked students to think of an adjective to describe a student who knew that he needed to trade in a ten for ten ones.  I used the word smart.  My students came up with a number of adjectives  that included brilliant, brainiac, genius, and bright.  At the extender level I asked my students to use a "because clapper" to provide a reason why a student who need to trade a ten for ten ones.  They answered the question using a "Teach Okay" and then shared with the class using call outs.I then wrote in the Genius Ladder what the students shared.  (Normally, I would already have the extender level of the ladder filled in, but since I wanted the students to provide the reason, I wrote it in the ladder after they came up with it.)

It was now time for the Genius Paragraph, which meant that it was time for the students to do some writing of their own.  First we talked about writing a "detail adder" that began  the "For example" Brainie.  We have used this Brainie a little bit in class, but I wanted to provide students with a more structured opportunity to include it within their writing.  I decided that it fit perfectly with this lesson.  Students then used "High Five Teach" to share examples of times when you would not have enough ones to solve a subtraction problem.  Since students had been orally doing something similar during math time, it wasn't too difficult for most of them to think of examples.  After sharing with their partners, I then asked a few students to share with the class.  What really impressed me was how many students used the "If, ___ then" Brainie in their "detail adder" sentence.  We had done a lot of practice with it previously, and it was great to see that students could apply it to a new situation.

Please note that it is very important that students are provided with many opportunities to write orally before they record their thoughts on paper.  While engaging in this oral writing practice students are using their "Brainies".  (Please see my posts on the Brainies.)  The Brainies do a great job of helping students learn the conventions and grammar of the English language.  I have found that this oral writing practice results in significantly fewer errors when students are ready for paper/pencil writing.

It was then time to write.  Students each have a writing notebook that they do their Red/Green Writing in each day.  Students only had around ten minutes to record their thinking, so I was only asking students to write down their topic sentence and one detail adder.  I walked around the room with my red and green pen making marks on the students' writing. ( If you are not familiar with Red/Green Writing, please see my post on the subject.)  Below is a sample of one of my low/average ELL student's writing.  I took a picture of the page in her notebook that contained her Genius Ladder writing.  What you see below it is the writing that she began the next day during Red/Green Writing.

I was very pleased with how this lesson went.  I am looking forward to finding more ways to use the Genius Ladder to reinforce Common Core concepts in all subject areas.