I’m back with Part II of my blog post: Raising the Bar with Writing! Thank you all SO much for your super sweet comments about Part I. If you missed Part I of this topic, click HERE to rewind and catch up with us. 🙂
We left off by talking about oral writing. We learned that by using oral writing in your classroom, your students are consistently using “college talk” throughout the day. This means they are speaking in clear and complete sentences within your classroom. This is key if you want your students to WRITE in complete sentences. We also saw how using oral writing transfers to paper because using proper conventions such as capitals and periods has become habit.
In Part I, I showed you our 5 sentence micro essays. Today, I’m going to show you how we transitioned from a 5 sentence micro essay to a 3 paragraph Genius Essay!
We started by learning how to orally write a triple whammy sentence. A triple whammy sentence has three parts to it and uses commas in a series. An example of a triple whammy sentence would be: In this blog post I will teach you about oral writing, micro essays, and triple whammy sentences. Easy, huh? A triple whammy sentence has three parts to it. It is, essentially, a thesis statement.
Here is our color-coded chart for our Genius Essay. Our orange, pink, and purple sentence is our triple whammy sentence. Each part of the triple whammy sentence (Your overall topic sentence) gets its own “micro essay.” Once the kids understood the color pattern, they quickly took off!
Check out Farrah Shipley’s blog post, as well, for additional ideas! She wrote a great post about First Grade Whole Brain Teaching. 🙂 Click on her button below to jump to her blog.
Keep on raising the bar with writing! And as always….
Cecilia says
January 31, 2014 at 5:32 amWhat a timely post. I am working with be high group in RTI and this will be perfect. I even own the same Polar Bear crafty. I can't wait for your next post. I'm also in the middle of reading the WBT book. Thanks soooooo much!
Stefanie Galvin says
January 31, 2014 at 10:53 amChristina, I've loved your Raising the Bar With Writing series. Here in Aus I've had my new class for only 2 days and today we had a go with Oral Writing (just a simple one sentence idea from my new Grade 1s!) and they absolutely loved it! Thanks for the introduction to it!
Stef
Miss Galvin Learns
Life in Special Education says
January 31, 2014 at 1:17 pmI want to be in your class! That is amazing!
Natalies Nook says
January 31, 2014 at 11:06 pmJust a fantastic post! I learned so much and am so excited to try this next week! You've inspired me!
Thank you!
~Natalie
Natalies Nook
Suzy Q says
February 1, 2014 at 2:07 amMust try this…STAT! Your firsties rock! (As does their teacher, naturally!)
Paula Peroli says
February 1, 2014 at 3:27 amChristina, you make a challenging task so realistic for your students to accomplish and my students,too, thanks to your sharing it in your blog. I am definitely going to use this method with my students. The polar bear genius essays are awesome and I can't to walk down your hallway Monday and see them in person! You and your students are A-MA-ZING!
Ms. B./Sra. B. says
February 1, 2014 at 10:37 pmHello! How long did it take to go through the writing process?
Thank you for this great idea!
Miss DeCarbo says
February 2, 2014 at 11:39 pmMs. B we started oral writing in November. 🙂
Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd says
February 2, 2014 at 8:15 pmThis is AWESOME, Christina! We do SOOOOO much WBT in my class throughout the day, and we actually use the "swipe" with our hand when we are orally brainstorming and a comma pops up. My kids ALWAYS "get it" and make sense of it SO much more when whole brain strategies are involved… With that being said, I can totally see this being a SEAMLESS transition for me to introduce the oral writing into our routine and then tackle a micro and genius essay!! This makes SO much sense to me and I KNOW it will have my writers flying in NO time. Thank you SO SO much for sharing!!! 🙂
Ashley
Schroeder Shenanigans in 2nd
Shar W says
March 4, 2014 at 2:27 amI just finished reading your latest post on writing, so I had to go back and read this one and will read the next one too. This is AWESOME!!! I need to copy/paste this into a document for me to refer to. I would LOVE to see this from my 2nd graders!
Thank you for sharing. Now to read the next part of your writing entry…
Casey Smith says
March 27, 2014 at 1:03 pmWow! This is amazing!!! I need to learn more about this whole brain teaching approach. I am somewhat confused about the movements and motions that go along with the oral sentences. But this was extremely helpful and makes so much sense! I could see this working very well for some of my more kinesthetic learners. Thank you so SO much for directing me to this post!
Peter Cummins says
January 16, 2015 at 8:17 amYour post is really good providing good information.. I liked it and enjoyed reading it. Keep sharing such important posts.
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