Visual Aids

I didn't quite make my goal of blogging the day of my writing teaching. I'm getting there though :)  I have some pictures, too!

We currently working on the "building blocks" of writing: What do sentences need? How do I know if I have a sentence? I previously described the games we have played to help drive this point home. I also introduced my friend, Ivan Capp:

Ivan is actually a friend of our academic therapist, but teachers are master borrowers and I added my own flair to the idea.  So far we have learned all sentences must have a noun (or pronoun) AND a verb. One student tried to get smart with me and gave an example of a command sentence, which doesn't have an explicit subject.  True, except his example wasn't a command, so I totally won that round!  One student is working slightly ahead of the other, so s/he has also created "bare bones" sentences--sentences with only a noun and verb, which we will be adding to later. I'm trying to come up with a connection from the bare bones to a skeleton. Ideas?

My other handy helpers I learned in ENG 5...something. I've tried to block that class out. But there were a couple of helpful nuggets buried in there. First up is the ARMS acronym for revising.

And the CUPS acronym for editing.

I want to be intentional about separating out revising and editing, since I did learn in my ENG class that they are, ideally, two different steps.  My students have used both of these acronyms to edit two longer writings they've done, mostly to establish baseline skills.  CUPS has gone over better than ARMS, but I fully expected that.

I'm also working on a poster depicting the two different approaches to the writing process. One is linear which most schools tend to teach and the other is cyclical, which is closer to what real authors use. I also will be adding a step from the traditional methods, which is the main difference I found in my research to teaching composition to dyslexic students. More on all that later.