Lesson:

What Got
Stolen?

using excellent details to launch organized, original mystery story

This lesson was proposed by
Northern Nevada teacher Jenn Potter
at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Grandpa's Teeth by Rod Clement. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out Grandpa's Teeth at Amazon.com.

Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

The writer will plan a scene from a story where a character confronts another character about something that has been stolen.  Descriptive details need to take precedence in this scene, as only a limited number of dialogue exchanges will be permitted.  At the scene's conclusion, a surprise ending (like that from Grandpa's Teeth) should be encouraged by the teacher. 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 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 March 2009'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.