This Lesson's Title:

Noun-Inspired Animal Reports

organizing an animal report by first brainstorming precise nouns

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

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book We Are Bears by Molly Grooms. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author.

Check out We Are Bears at Amazon.com.

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

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

We are researchers. If you assign a non-fiction animal reports to your students, this lesson provides you with a unique structure and an interesting lesson about verbs and nouns. Inspired by Molly Grooms' We Are Bears, students will organize their reports based on interesting animal-specific nouns they discover while researching. 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; students will learn about the power of precise nouns as they make choices for their report, and they will learn how to turn verbs into interesting nouns.   The support trait in this assignment is organization; the graphic organizer will help students think about their reports' parts or paragraphs, and students should talk about pacing and sequencing as they prepare to write rough drafts.