A first grade teammate and I taught a writing process lesson across the five fingers of the hand. The pinky was the beginning, the three middle fingers the middle, and the thumb was the ending. She later thought that this might be too hard for her students. She had been using three fingers. I think that if I sit down with her better students, they can get it. What do you think?
I use this method and talk about the time order words involved. "In the beginning, next, then, later, finally". Yesterday I grouped my kids in 5 teams and assigned each of the sections to each to retell a part of the story.
It's really a skill that takes practice learning where things are happening in the story. I make sure they know that the pinky identifies the characters and setting, the next finger tells what is happening now, the middle is the problem, the third is the solution and the thumb is the ending of the story. I think if you break it down and use a few stories they are familiar with to begin with, you will have more success.
I have done the 5 fingers before. I made a giant hand as a model, and did Who, What, Where, When, How. The palm was the topic. Then I modeled the whole writing using the giant hand. After that, I had each child trace their own hand, write the W's on each finger of their paper hand, and cut it out (which some kids need assistance with of course).
Whenever they had done one W, they would bend a paper finger so they would know what to use next.
Since we're starting expository writing, I may use this strategy with topic sentence, fact, fact, fact, conclusion.
I taught the lesson by describing how every story has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. I showed them my hand that I had traced. Before I presented it to them, I put a green dot sticker on my pinky. I put yellow dot stickers on the middle fingers, and I put a red dot sticker on my thumb. I asked the kids to tell me where they thought I should start my story, and they said that it was probably at green (go, like a traffic light). The yellow was like in between green and red, so that must be the details in between, and they knew that red meant stop (or end, the story). We put our topic on the palm of our hand. I then shared a story that one of the students had already written. I read it from the hand I had drawn.
We will probably have to practice this a lot before they "get it," and some of ours still want to write off topic, so maybe this will help them see what they are doing before they set out to draft their story.
11-14-2009, 06:44 AM
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