Inferencing skills and character traits
It’s Wednesday and who among us doesn’t need a little inspiration for writing in the middle of the week? The writing gurus all emphasize the importance of “choice” when encouraging the practice of writing. In an earlier entry (Sept 13) I suggested interviewing someone and writing up the results of the interview.
This week I’ve attached a short reading “Five Dollars” – a great selection for teaching inferencing skills, but the selection could also serve as a lesson about character trait/s and how to develop a trait in a writing selection. Questions like: what do you know about the narrator? How do you know it? What part does repetition play in the development of the character? Could the character be you? The selection then might serve as a jumping off place for writing. Perhaps some of you writers can compose a character trait around a single event like taking money from a mother’s purse. I suspect that many of your students would be more able to respond to a paragraph describing a real friend, a sibling, a relative, a made up person – somewhat along the lines of interview I described earlier. I have also seen teachers scaffold paragraphs with beginning sentences; for example:
Aunt Rose is about as _____________________as they come.
Jose has got to be one of the ______________________guys around.
If you want_____________________ in a friend, Sally is your girl.
_________________________is something my big brother struggles with.
And, we all know that writing and sharing with the class our writing is a best practice.
Write on, team
This week I’ve attached a short reading “Five Dollars” – a great selection for teaching inferencing skills, but the selection could also serve as a lesson about character trait/s and how to develop a trait in a writing selection. Questions like: what do you know about the narrator? How do you know it? What part does repetition play in the development of the character? Could the character be you? The selection then might serve as a jumping off place for writing. Perhaps some of you writers can compose a character trait around a single event like taking money from a mother’s purse. I suspect that many of your students would be more able to respond to a paragraph describing a real friend, a sibling, a relative, a made up person – somewhat along the lines of interview I described earlier. I have also seen teachers scaffold paragraphs with beginning sentences; for example:
Aunt Rose is about as _____________________as they come.
Jose has got to be one of the ______________________guys around.
If you want_____________________ in a friend, Sally is your girl.
_________________________is something my big brother struggles with.
And, we all know that writing and sharing with the class our writing is a best practice.
Write on, team
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