This Lesson's Title:

Listen to the Word Choice of Authors

crafting a poem about the wind, modeled after Listen to the Rain.

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Teacher Consultant
Karen McGee.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book Listen to the Rain by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this books' authors.

Check out Listen to the Rain at Amazon.com.

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

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Bill Martin Jr. creates a rain storm with his word choice in his book, Listen to the Rain. When students analyze this text and attend to the way the words are deliberately used to create a mood, they can innovate to create a new text. Because the analysis is a group action which creates a Content Word Wall, students are freed from the anxiety of having to find the “just right” words necessary to create their own texts. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is word choice; the writer’s goal is to choose words from a variety of published authors which will create a mood of a wind storm.   The support trait in this assignment is organization; the writer will model Bill Martin Jr.’s text pattern to create a new poem which will contain many of the words from the Content Word Wall.