In this post I would like to focus on the Extender Level. At the Extender Level students are shown how to extend simple sentences. I personally believe that it is all of the practice that my students have had at this level of the Genius Ladder that has helped them to punctuate their sentences properly. In previous years a very common writing error made by my students looked something like this: I was playing ball with my friends. At the park. This year I have not seen any errors like this, and I mainly credit the Extender Level of the Genius Ladder for this. My students now not only understand what it means to extend a sentence, but they know all of the different ways that it can be done, and they get practice with this on a regular basis. As a result, the majority of the time my students' writing is punctuated properly. To be honest, it has never been so easy or effortless to get kids to put periods in the proper places in their writing. (As a side note, let me just say that other components of the WBT writing program play a role in this as well, especially the Brainies. There is definitely a synergistic effect in WBT writing. However, it is the Genius Ladder that really helps students understand and apply sentence structure.)
Through January of this year, I had taught my students the following extenders: because, telling when, telling where, prepositions, a dependent clause starting with if, and the conjunction but. They were doing quite well with all of these, so I began to think about where I wanted to go next. Looking through the Brainies I saw that I had not yet taught my students appositives. Some of you may be thinking that second grade is a little to young to learn appostives, but in reality it is not. Students come across them all the time when they are reading non-fiction text. Here is an example of an appositive found in non-fiction text: Owls, nocturnal animals, sleep during the day and are active at night. Students do not automatically know how to read the appositive ", nocturnal animals,". This is something that they must be taught. Since we were doing informative/explanatory writing and were also reading a lot of informational text in reading, it seemed like the perfect time to introduce students to the Appositive Brainie. Not only would they learn a new extender, but they would be better able to comprehend non-fiction text, because they would better understand its structure. Of course, appositives can be found in any type of text, so I knew that learning this Brainie would help my students with any type of reading they were doing.
Although, I wanted to focus on non-fiction text, I decided that it would be easier for my students to understand what appositives were if I began with narrative text. I began by telling my students that they were going to be learning a new Brainie. This statement alone was enough to get them excited. They immediately began trying to guess which Brainie it was. After telling them that they would be learning the appositive Brainie, I showed them the gesture associated with this Brainie. I then used the Genius Ladder to introduce it. The extender level sentence that I used was the following: My little sister, who is always bugging me, broke my new game. Since this was the first time that we had looked at an appositive, when we reached the extender level, I spent some time defining it through the use of Mirror Words and Teach Okays. I told my students that it was like a Post-It note that you put on a sentence. You don't have to have it. You can take it away anytime that you want, but it makes your writing more interesting by giving the reader more details. I then used the sentence at the extender level, but provided the students with additional examples using Mirror Words and Teach Okay. One of my examples was the following: My little sister, Sharon, broke my new game. This example was very important because my lowest students, who could not think of anything else, were able to insert a name.
After a few days of this, I felt like my students were ready to try it with non-fiction text. We were reading a passage at the time on tree rings, so I put up the Genius Ladder that you see below. The appositive at the extender level was added with the help of the students.
Students were asked to use an appositive to define tree rings. I have to be honest. This was not easy for them. They worked with a partner to read their passage and come up with a definition. With some guidance, they did it. I wanted them to go through this process so that they could see how appositives are used to define vocabulary in non-fiction texts. We have done similar Ladders with appositives on different non-fiction topics since finishing this first one. Each one has gotten a little bit easier for them to do.
The real breakthrough came when students began noticing appositives in their reading and pointing them out to me. I have a few students who have also begun to use them in their writing, which is what I was hoping for. These students have all received Super Improver Stars, which is motivating the rest of my class to try using them.
Although this has probably been the hardest Brainie that we have learned so far this year, it has definitely been rewarding and a lot of fun. I am very thankful for both the Brainies and the Genius Ladder. They are definitely the rock stars of WBT writing. I would love to hear how you are using the Genius Ladder and Brainies together in your room. Please share by leaving a comment. Happy writing!
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