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.

Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources :

Step one (sharing the published model):  Read Listen to the Rain the first time without showing any pictures. If possible, use a rain stick to help students hear the rainstorm. On the second read of the book, while sharing the illustrations, invite the students to comment on whether or not they appreciate the match between Martin’s words and the illustrator’s pictures. By asking students to attend closely to the pictures, they also attend closely to the words.

Put the typed poem on the overhead. On the board to the side of the projected poem, write two columns— Hard, Soft. As you read the poem slowly from the overhead, you interrupt yourself on the key words and ask students if they think that those words sound like a soft rainstorm or a hard rainstorm. Either you or a scribe write those words in the correct columns. When the majority of students disagree on the placement of a word, we write that word in the middle between the columns. While doing this analysis, students notice that the author used some ordinary words in unusual ways and that sometimes he “made up” some new words to fit the mood he was trying to create.

Step two (introducing models of writing):    First, read aloud one or all of the student models that come with this lesson. Focus on the sounds of the language. Then put the student models on the overhead and examine how the students used words from the Soft, Middle, and Hard charts to create their own wind poems. Draw students’ attention to how closely or loosely the writers modeled Bill Martin Jr.’s organization in his poem.

• Three fourth graders--Isabella, Carmen, and Liam--share their poems.
• We're looking for student samples for other grade levels for this prompt!  Help us get some, and we'll send you a free resource for your classroom!  Contact us at publish@writingfix.com for details.

Step three (thinking and pre-writing): Explain to the students that they will now write their own poems entitled “Listen to the Wind,” modeled after Bill Martin Jr.’s book. In order to collect the necessary words for the Wind Content Word Wall, the students will need to read an assortment of books. Put the students in groups of 3-5, and appoint a reader and a scribe to each group; the other students in the groups are called, “stoppers.” Give each group one or two texts that have wind words somewhere in them. As the reader in the group begins reading, the stoppers listen carefully and say, “Stop,” every time they hear an interesting word that they think might be connected to the wind; the scribe records that word. Remember to invite students to search for words which might be used in an unusual way just as Bill Martin Jr. did. The small group does not have to classify the words at this time. When most groups have finished the reading, come back together as a whole. Using three sheets of chart paper labeled Hard, Middle, Soft, put the words in their columns. Begin with one group saying, “Give me one word that you think is Soft,” and continue around the room until all groups have shared a word; you record the words in the proper columns. If there is a disagreement about the placement of a word, you might take a vote from the whole group.

When your Content Word Wall is complete, students are ready to write their own poems. To help them remember the form Bill Martin Jr. used, keep the overhead version projected. If you have primary students or if you have students who are lower functioning in writing, you might pull them together and write a group poem. A group poem written by primary students can be put into a book form where select students illustrate each page. If a group poem is written with older students, have each students sign the poem, make copies for all, and have the students draw illustrations as borders around their own poem.

The interactive button game on the Student Instructions Page is designed to help your students start thinking about the types of words they might use to describe different types of wind in their poems.

Karen designed this template for students who might need more organizational scaffolding when drafting their poems. If students use this worksheet to create a draft, be sure to encourage them to break away from the pattern of the book as they prepare to revise and make a more unique poem.

Step four (revising with specific trait language):  One tool for revision is provided below.  To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach WritingFix's Revision and Response Post-Its to your students' drafts.  Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5."   Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings.  For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.

• Sheet of 6 Word Choice Post-It Notes
• Sheet of 6 Organization Post-It Notes

Step five (editing for conventions):  After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor.   If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers.  With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post-it.  The "Community of Editors" idea is just one of dozens and dozens of inspiring ideas that is talked about in detail in the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Workbook for Teachers.

Step six (publishing for the portfolio):   When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block.  Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here.  Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.

Interested in publishing student work on-line?  We invite student writers to post final drafts of their original at WritingFix's Community of Student Writers.  This is a safe-to-use blog for students and teachers. No writing is posted until it is approved by the moderator. Contact us at publish@writingfix.com if you have questions about getting your students published.