Writing

Haunted Houses

This year we decided to approach writing differently.  Obviously, we want students exposed to and practicing various writing genres throughout the year. Inevitably, we run out of time!  So this year we decided to keep our program "Project Based".  We would use these projects to teach various writing genres.  

We began our first writing project at the end of September by having students create their own Haunted Houses.  The Haunted Houses were used to have students create an advertisement (persuasive writing) enticing people to visit.  We also had students write a detailed description of one room in their Haunted House (descriptive writing).  We LOVED the way this project worked out!

 

Inventor/Inventions

We began the new year by having students brainstorm jobs or activities they wanted to avoid doing or problems they wanted to address or fix.  Each child then created an invention to address their concern.  We had a Book Reader, A Mini Me, A Cleaning Machine, a Chore Machine, the Gift-O'Matic and the Creative Writing Machine along with several other creative ideas.  From these inventions, we had students create brochures that involved several types of writing.....descriptive, perspective, creative and informative.  The brochures had to include Frequently Asked Questions, Customer Reviews and general descriptions.  They turned out so great!

All this creativity led beautifully into a research project!! HA!!  We had our students explore the webpage WHOINVENTEDIT.net.  This webpage is fantastic for contemporary research information.  The kids loved choosing topics like,  who invented: bubble gum, the NBA, lipstick, google, the Whoopie cushion, etc. All of our students chose a research topic and created a power point presentation based on their newfound knowledge. This project really was fantastic!