Connections Help Visualizations/ Visualization Game/ Memoir Partner Editing

It is the end of the quarter, so it has been a busy week in the classroom. We are wrapping up our month on focusing on Visualization. Students have loved this hands on strategy, and have now started to really focus on their senses as they read. They like calling it a "movie in my brain!"

To wrap our unit we had students connect the two strategies they have learned so far (Making Connections was the strategy for September). We gave students a chart that had them make a connection that helped them visualize what they were seeing in the book. Of course, we modeled how to do this with our read aloud Ida B.


Here are some examples:

Sorry they are sideways...couldn't get them to flip.

On Friday we then ended the unit with a game. Students were all given a white board and a dry erase marker. They played this game with their table groups. One person was to draw a picture and describe it to the rest of the group. They were then to draw what they visualized based on the words of his description. When they were done...they all revealed their white boards to compare their visualizations to see if they were close. They loved it...and got excited when they were close. Here are a few: 

Wish I could add more...but still figuring out how to blank out students faces. 

We are finally to the point of publishing our memoirs. Once students were done with their drafts they received this sheet:

Front

 Back

Before handing it to a peer editor, they wrote down what they wanted feedback on...they really took this to heart and wrote down things they were unsure about: "not sure if my quotation marks are right," "I don't like my ending, anything else I can do?" "What other words can I use besides "ran"?"

The editor then filled in the paper, gave them feedback...shared their editing with their writer and then handed the paper to us. This gave us a great draft check before we headed into publishing. (A great way to get a few points in for a grade.)

We are now publishing their stories in blank Bare Books. We will put all of their writing from the year in this book. So they are just putting simple decoration around the writing. They don't mind though because they keep flipping to the extra pages in the book....looking forward to filling in the rest of the pages with more writing!

Next week is just a three day week, and we are celebrating everything pumpkin, from writing to a pumpkin drop! Looking forward to posting next week!