This Lesson's Title:

An Onomatopoetic Field Trip

using onomatopoeia to tell the story of an imaginary field trip

This lesson was created for WritingFix after being proposed by Northern Nevada teacher Karen Mitchell an an NNWP inservice class.

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

Check out Rattletrap Car at Amazon.com.

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

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

After enjoying the onomatopoetic word choices and imagery from Phyllis Root's picture book, Rattletrap Car, students will brainstorm lists of words that imitate sound effects. Inspired by their word lists, students will plan a story that centers on some sort of field trip or journey outside. To help tell their creative stories, students will use a thoughtful amount of onomatopoeia, and they will read their final stories out loud to each other. 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; writers will brainstorm strong adjectives before composing their paragraphs.  The support trait in this assignment is voice; requiring the paragraph to be "voiced" from another character's perspective gives developing student writers practice as they develop their own voices.

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 January 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.