Show, Don't Tell & Bucket Fillers

On Friday, students finished their Show, Don't Tell activity.  They finished coloring their picture that illustrated the emotion they wrote about.  This week students will read through their narrative rough draft and find places where they may have "told" an emotion or action, and will revise the sentence to "show" the emotion or action with lots of details and descriptive words!

Since it was a Friday students emptied their "buckets" and saw all the nice comments their classmates wrote to them.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

Show, Don't Tell & Vocabulary Organizer

This morning in Writer's Workshop students learned the importance of "Show, Don't Tell!"  First I presented a couple of examples of how published authors "show" a character's emotion or describe a scene without telling:

"The boy was nervous" is plain. "Sweat trickled down the boy's face. His stomach tightened into a hard knot." (from Keeper of the Swamp by Ann Garrett) is much more interesting.

"She is old." Is ordinary. "She is hunched over, crunched up, bent, like an empty soda can" (from Girl Coming in for a Landing) is more interesting.

"She was sad" is boring. "…a misty grayness crept inside her and would not go away." (from Loud Emily, by Alexis O'Neill) is infinitely more interesting!

Then students were to try showing one of the following emotions by writing a paragraph in their notebooks.

 Next, students picked a green slip of paper with an emotion written on it.  They taped the paper into their notebooks and wrote a scene showing the emotion.  Tomorrow they will finish writing a final copy of this paragraph as well as drawing and coloring a picture that also shows the emotion!

Students paired up with a spelling buddy to practice their word sorts and quiz each other on their five Words to Learn words. 

In Reader's Workshop, I modeled how to complete a Vocabulary Organizer in order to write a summary.   Soon students will be reading nonfiction texts, completing the organizer, and writing a summary. 

Similes

Reading groups met this morning to have a discussion about their book.

Students come prepared with flagged thoughts in their books and the top of their Journal Entry form filled out.

Once the discussion comes to a close students individually complete the rest of their Journal Entry form and as a group complete the Group Meeting form.  This is a chance for students to reflect on their discussion.

In Writer's Workshop, students learned how adding powerful similes into their narrative writing can make a big impact.  I opened the lesson by reading:

Reading this book also opened up a discussion about idioms and cliches!  When I was reading my "choice book" at home the other night I came across so many wonderful similes.  I shared them with the class:

Students know that in fourth grade their teachers expect more detailed similes instead of "blue as the sky" or "bright as the sun."  They added a simile into the mentor text Baby's Ears.  After we discussed possible similes that the author could have added into her story, students went to a spot in the room to include powerful similes into their narratives.