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Draw Label Caption

Writers Workshop Daily Plan

1. Mini-Lesson Focus: Procedural Process Trait Conventions

ELACC3W5, ELACC4W5, ELACC5W5 With guidance and support from peers and adults, develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, and editing. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1–3 up to and current grade level.)*Writing Process*

Draw Label Caption: In this lesson, students will learn another way to take a prewriting idea and begin to develop it. Tell the class that this is a process that helps the writer figure out what his/her ideas are. It helps them to find focus. It is just as important as the writing itself. Tell them that the picture they draw in this strategy is like stopping to take a photograph of a specific moment. (In fact, you could bring in a photograph that you have taken that illustrates each of these types of “photos”—a blurry one, one that’s too far away, one that is too close, and one that is just right.) It is one “scene” of a memory, just like a “scene” of a movie.

Tell them that when you take a picture with a camera, you have to have a main thing that you are taking a picture of and it has to be in focus. If you are moving when you take a picture what happens? It ends up being blurry. Nobody would be able to tell what your picture is of. If you stand too far away, what happens? You won’t really know what the picture is all about because there is too much “stuff” in it. If you get too close, there’s not enough background so it’s hard to understand how the subject of the picture goes with the stuff around it. That is the trick to taking a good picture, and it is also the trick to drawing a good, focused picture to help you with your writing.

Model, on the overhead or whiteboard, how to make a sketch. Tell them that it is different from other kinds of drawings because it is quick and it does not have color. (If kids get hung up on that part, let them know that they can finish the drawing later on and add it as an illustration to the story that will eventually go with it.) Allow students to go back to their Writing folders, choose a topic from their already brainstormed list of ideas, and sketch a quick picture. Give them all of 5 minutes to do so.

Then have them come back to the front of the room and explain the label part of this strategy. The idea is to label absolutely everything in the picture, from the grass, to their new shoes, to the cat, to the sky, clouds, etc… They should use lines to connect their labels to the things they are labeling. They can write all over their sketch, left to right, top to bottom, up and down. The more the better. Give them 5 minutes to go back to their seats and label as many things as they can. Gather them back up and explain that now a caption is going to go with their labeled drawing. Model with your own labeled drawing. Make sure that the caption goes specifically with the drawing. (If it is a picture of the beach, the sentence is not going to be about the long ride home from the beach.)

Give students time to go back and write a caption that goes with their labeled drawing. This will go into their writing folder to write more about during another class period. This strategy is good for reluctant writers—they can do this strategy several times in a row and put the “scenes” together to make a story.

2. Status of Class

3. Student Writing/Teacher Conferring

4. Author Share: Student Teacher

After giving students time to work in their groups, call them back and let them share.

Troup County Schools 2012