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Motivate those kids by publishing their best stories at our ning! Click here to post your students' crazy animal-inspired stories!

 

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Teachers sharing back!

Do you have a clever way you help your students understand how to use stronger visual details in writing? Something better than a worksheet? Consider sharing it with us by clicking here.

 

Welcome, Young Writers!

The Crazy Animal Game for Kids

carefully choosing details to share so that a reader sees a picture in his/her mind

(This prompt was developed at an inservice class by Nevada teacher Terri Myklebust.)


What details would you use to describe this crazy monkey?

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Write about a(n) that can

                           

 

 

Teacher-Shared Student Samples for this Prompt:
At WritingFix, we've been safely publishing & celebrating student writers since 2007.
Strangely, we have just one sample for this popular prompt...let's change that!

The Rappin’ Frog
 by Skylar, third grader

I know this frog
In a lake on a log.
He likes to rap
And he does it in a snap!

Ribbit, ribbit,
Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!

One day he saw some flies
Comin’ right straight by,
And he said, “Hi,
I think you’re gonna die!”

Ribbit, ribbit,
Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!

He said, “I ate too many flies.
I don’t know if I’m gonna die.
I thought they would be yummy,
But they’re really crummy
In my tummy!”

Ribbit, ribbit,
Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!

So if you don’t wanna cry,
Don’t eat too many flies.
Don’t be a hog
Or you’ll fall off your log! Yeah!

Ribbit, ribbit,
Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!

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Share back with WritingFix and you could earn a classroom resource from NNWP:
What Mentor Texts could Strengthen this Lesson?
Suggest a mentor text review for the following essential question:

Hey teachers! What mentor text would you use to teach younger writers to carefully choose memorable and thoughtful details in a story about an animal that acts a little strange? Click here to tell us the name of the mentor text, to share a brief description of the text, and to explain how you'd use the book to inspire better writing from your students. If we feature your idea at this page, you'll earn a resource for your classroom!

Share a Mentor Text and Idea Development Activity: There are a lot of great stories about animals that act a little crazy or odd. I'm particular to Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery because the authors do a great job of using details that are memorable...long after you stop reading it aloud, you remember specific details. Ask your students, "What makes those details so memorable?" and then challenge them to think with those types of details when they write their own Crazy Animal Stories.

If you chart the details and hang them around the room, you can keep referring students to them as they draft and revise their crazy animal stories.

--Corbett Harrison, Reno, Nevada


Share back with WritingFix and you could earn a classroom resource from NNWP:
What Lessons Strengthen Detail Choice?
Share an activity you'd use before or after your students write:

Hey teachers: What mini-lessons/pre-writing activities would you present to teach younger writers to "paint pictures on their readers' minds?" Click here to briefly share a technique you use to strengthen your students' awareness of the kind of visual details that improve writing. The model below shows the kind of good ideas we're hoping teachers will share with us.

I use old greeting cards or calendars that have very obvious differences for example one with Christmas trees, one with monkeys, one with little children.  Then I break up the class into teams to write a description of one of the pictures.  The team that writes the best description wins a point.  As students become better at this skill, I make the pictures more and more similar, for example all mountain photos.  Students will start to see that the clearer their description and the more details they use the more likely their team is to score points.

-- Stacy Dibble, Worthington, Minnesota

(Stacy chose a Going Deep with Compare and Contrast Thinking Guide as her gift for sharing this.)

Got your own technique for teaching details. Click here to share!

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