Writing has never been so easy to teach. The results are almost effortless. I never imagined that my students could produce such great writing. There is nothing like the WBT writing program.
Whole Brain writing is like the perfect recipe. It takes the right combination of ingredients, in just the right amounts, mixed together on a daily basis to create a masterpiece that causes anyone who experiences it to say, "I must have that recipe!" In other blog posts I have talked about all of the ingredients in the WBT writing program. In this post I would like to show you how some of those ingredients came together over a two week period within my writing block to produce some very exciting results.
It was time for our class to begin informative writing. I gave a lot of thought as to how I wanted to start this unit, and I decided that I definitely wanted to incorporate the compare and contrast Brainies into whatever we did. We have already used them a lot this year, but I had never asked students to compare and contrast information taken directly from non-fiction informational text. This seemed like a logical next step.
I began by bringing in a short passage that compared lions and tigers. The first day we read the passage together using Mirror Words, Brainies, and story telling gestures. I then had the students take out their red and green pens, and we went through the passage one sentence at a time. Using Teach Okay, students had to decide if the sentence told about lions, tigers, or both lions and tigers. They also had to use a because clapper to explain why they made that choice. If the sentence referred just to lions, they underlined it in red pen. If it referred just to tigers, they underlined it in green pen. If it referred to both lions and tigers, then they underlined it in both colors. This took one full day,
On day two, we began writing. I was asking students to write two paragraphs. One paragraph would explain how the animals were the same, and the other would explain how they were different. Each paragraph had to have a topic sentence, detail adders, and a concluder. The details had to come from the text and had to be paraphrased. This one we worked on together. I wrote on the board, while students wrote in their journals. There were a lot of Teach Okays going on as students worked together to paraphrase the ways that the lions and tigers were similar and different. They shared their paraphrases with the class using Call Outs. A call Out is used when a student is going to share with the entire class. The purpose is to engage the entire class in the sharing. The student stands and says class, followed by Mirror Words. The student then shares using Brainies and gestures. The rest of the class repeats both the student's words and gestures. We spent one day writing our similar paragraph and one day writing our different paragraph.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about paragraph number two - how lions and tigers are different. I wanted to use this opportunity to show students how to use the "but/however" Brainie to contrast. My students already were very familiar with the "but" Brainie. We had spend a lot of time previously working on it. We had played the "But Complexor Game" (See the WBT Writing Game for more information on this.) We had also done numerous Genius Ladders with "but" extenders. Therefore, it was very easy to model for them how to use the this Brainie to contrast two items. However, the "however" Brainie was new to them. I needed to spend some time teaching it in the context of contrasting, before I could expect them to use it in their writing. So, I decided to use the Genius Ladder for this. Below is the Genius Ladder that we used. Students quickly got the idea. That afternoon a few of them had already started using the "however" Brainie in their red/green writing. (If you are not familiar with red/green writing, please see my blog post on this topic.)
The next step was to have students work together. I gave students a new passage about Polar Bears and Brown Bears. The same process was repeated, except that students did everything with their partners. I circulated and assisted as needed. It was amazing listening to the dialogue and watching the Brainies that they were using as they worked together to write their two paragraphs.
The last step was for students to repeat the same process independently. I chose a passage about butterflies and moths. Before they began writing, I introduced them to a new writing rule that was added to our writing wall: Two sentences in a row never start with the same word. (You can read more about this wall in my post on red/green writing.) Below is a picture of the wall.
To assist students with this, I asked them to do a little of their own red/green writing. Using their green pens, they had to circle the first word of every sentence. Then it became very simple. No two circles in a row could be the same. They thought the rule was very grown-up, and they especially liked using their green pens.
I did not give students any assistance. I wanted to see what they could do on their own, after having gone through this process. I have to say that I was very pleased with the results. The students did a great job. They were able to write two indented paragraphs with topic sentences, paraphrased detail adders, and a concluder. Below is a sample of their writing. This was done by one of my average students. Notice that in paragraph two he used the words "however" and "but". This is something that all but a couple of my very lowest students were able to do. I would also like to point out that this student drew a smilie face each time he indented. This is something that I often do during red/green writing.
As you can see for yourself, Whole Brain writing really works! So what are you waiting for? Give it a try in your own classroom. I can promise you that you won't be sorry.
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