This Lesson's Title:

Rolling with the Animals

writing original stories with action-packed descriptors

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by Nevada teacher Heide Kerr at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.

The intended "mentor text" to use when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Duck on a Bike by David Shannon. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out Duck on a Bike 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:

The writer will plan an original story where an animal (other than a duck) finds itself on a human mode of transportation (other than a bike).  Three other animals will react to the unusual scene.  Using the graphic organizer included with this on-line assignment, the writer will include sufficient details to end up with a well-paced and descriptive story. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; strong details that use action verbs and interesting adjectives should be encouraged.  The support trait in this assignment is organization; this writing prompt comes with a graphic organizer that will require writers to pre-plan paragraphs and story parts that have a purpose.

Recipient of the NNWP's
Excellent Writing Lesson Award:

Because of the quality of its resources and ideas, this WritingFix lesson was selected by the Northern Nevada Writing Project as June 2008's Writing Lesson of the Month. It was e-mailed to thousands of teachers who are members of the NNWP's Writing Lesson of the Month Teacher Network.

To quickly access all the WritingFix lessons that have been chosen as "Lesson of the Month," click here to visit the NNWP's archive. You can have a link to a high-quality writing lesson sent to you every month.