1 - write the following four sentences on the board: Tucker is a trucker. He is from Winnemucca. He is stuck in the muck. He is out of luck.
2 - have someone combine the sentences as the model sentence (in this case it was my Assistant Principal, who's in her first year at the school)
3 - challenge the students to combine the sentences themselves; if anyone gets it exactly right they win a prize (in this case $5)I did this with four separate classes, approximately 120 students total, and only one kid came close. And that's because he cheated with a student from an earlier class. The cool thing about it all: when I approached the AP about doing this she was in a huge hurry, which is how she basically walks the halls everyday. Well, she started to write a sentence, then scratched it out. Then she wrote a sentence and didn't like it. So she wrote another sentence. After rereading and thinking, she decided on the second sentence. Pretty awesome. She was thinking, revising, editing, and doing so in a way that it was transparent because the students got to see it all. It provided a great example of what writers do.
It is a fun challenge. It got the kids thinking. I'll be trying things like this just about every Tuesday, before we go to the Library. And now, after a good day like today, I've got to say that Tuesdays could be one of my favorite days as a teacher. It's days when I chunk the material down: 8 minutes max for intro activity--something quick like "Tucker the Trucker" or a similar sentence level writing activity; to the Library for information about new books, new reads, and for the students to check out books and read; discussion time about your books interspersed; return to class for a closer--could be anything, today it was updates on writing contests and outside publishing opportunities, and games of Free Rice.
I've got to say a huge thank you to Julie Sheerman for introducing me to the "Tucker the Trucker" activity, and to Julie Mahaffey who is our school librarian and works amazingly hard to make sure that the library offers lots of different books for our kids. They're both awesome people, and in a time when I'm beginning to feel isolated in my classroom, I know that I am nothing without the awesome support around me.
PS - I'm trying to get into reading more of the yalit stuff, so I'm reading Meg Cabot's Pants on Fire, and it's pretty much hilarious simply for the front and back cover picture, but it creates opportunities for discussion with the kids, even more so than when they see me reading my own books (I'm currently still trying to finish Zeitoun and How Soccer Explain the World).
