This Lesson's Title:

Moving through a Machine

using a variety of transitions to explain the workings of an imaginary machine

This lesson was created by NNWP Teacher Consultant Corbett Harrison. Check out all of Corbett's on-line lessons by clicking here.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book Homer Price by Robert McCloskey. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 3 of this book.

Check out Homer Price at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

After enjoying chapter 3 from McCloskey's classic chapter book, Homer Price, students will work together to expand upon McCloskey's description of how the donut-making machine works. Focusing on a variety of transitions, students will build a class paragraph that shows even more details than the original book. Then...inspired by the class paragraph, individuals or pairs of students will create an original description of food moving through an imaginary machine they dream up. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait is sentence fluency; students will explore a variety of transition word choices, and they will carefully choose ones that fit the step-by-step process they are describing with words. The support trait is organization; sequence and structure will be discussed and pre-planned for as students create their paragraphs.