I want to reflect on the writing I held during my four day unit plan. We were studying inventions and inventors so I had them write "IF I could invent anything it would be _____ because..." and describe it OR they could write "I think _____ is a good/bad invention because..." and tell us why. I know these prompts may seem simple or overdone, but I think they really get the kids to explore different ideas and though processes. The first prompt allows them to think of problems we have as individuals, classes, countries etc or things we hate to do and how to solve it. Students came up with light up jewelry boxes so we can find them in the dark (why? Who knows! But it seems cool!) a homework machine that you put your homework in and it spits back out to you, a mouse that could clean your house while you sleep etc. I was so impressed with their ideas it was incredible!
The second writing prompt was interesting because they have not done persuasive writing yet and I did not go into the details, I just wanted to see what would happen. One girl wrote about how dictionaries are great inventions because they tell us all the words and how to spell them and what they mean. Who would have ever considered the common dictionary an invention? I mean it definitely is! Another wrote about how hand held video games were not a good invention because if you play them all the time it could hurt your eyes and you might have to get glasses. Talk about really thinking! The last thing I expected was for a first grader to tell me video games are bad- but maybe she has had experience with this or someone told her it could happen if she played them too much.
I loved giving open ended writing prompts like this that allowed for creativity, it was so fun reading their responses and I was so impressed. As a funny side note, I forget that as first graders they are still learning common writing conventions and don't always understand them. I cannot tell you how many students actually wrote the "______" or the "..." and my favorite was when I saw kids write "is a good/bad invention" haha I didn’t even think that they would not pick up on the "/" as meaning "pick one of these that suites your topic". haha it gave me a good laugh :)
It's amazing how kids pick things up from our writing that we don't even think twice about.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to give them a persuasive option without having taught it yet. I bet you learned a lot about their base knowledge of persuasive writing and how it works!