04-+PROCEDURES


 * PROCEDURES**

1. Dress in a contradictory costume for the upcoming holiday.

2. Ask the students what holiday you are representing with your outfit.

3. Explain the importance of logic, organization and details in all areas of life, especially writing.

4. Explain to the students that they are going to create their own greeting card/s for the upcoming holiday, focusing on the upcoming holiday, following a logical pattern in poetry, following correct conventions of punctuation, capitalization and spelling, as well as correct verb and noun forms, and subject/verb agreement.

5. Encourage students to share responses of their experiences when they may have approached a situation in an unorganized or illogical manner.

6. Record a few positive student responses in the areas of verb/noun forms, subject/verb agreement. Use these correct responses as examples of correct usage. Then, use the event or situation to emphasis the importance of being organized and using logic, even and especially in writing.

7. Review correct conventions of punctuation, spelling and capitalization.

8. Review definition of noun and verb, giving examples of each.

9. Review subject/verb agreement.

10. Discuss focusing on a topic, such as your outfit. Elicit responses on how you did not focus on the topic of Christmas (or the holiday for which you are doing this) and how important it would have been to do so.

11. Distribute to students a store-bought greeting card. Tell them for which holiday the card was made. Ask them to determine whether the author stayed on the topic. Now pass out assorted cards for different holidays. Ask the students to identify the holiday for which the card was written.

12. Using the cards they have, tell the students to read the poetry inside and concentrate on the pattern of each card. Review poetry at this point, reading your favorite poem and discussing elements or using an overhead, model creating a poem maybe including the class in the process.

13. Distribute plain paper to each student. Tell them to make a column for the following: Verbs, Nouns, subject/verb agreement, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization.

14. From both cards ask the students to identify and place a check beside each area if the cards contain verbs, nouns, subject/verb agreement, and correct conventions. Tell them to respond whether the author has an organizational pattern and has focused on the topic.

15. Tell the students to think of someone special to whom they would like to send this holiday card.

16. Have the students draft a card to their special someone.

17. Monitor students as they draft.

18. Let students peer-review the cards before they publish, reminding them to include the items they checked from store-bought cards. They may use the checklist they used from the practice of the two different cards you passed out in step 11.

19. Distribute stock paper to each student and allow publishing.

20. Give each student a checklist you copied from the attached file.

21. Students turn in card with the checklist (see attached file) attached. These will be used for assessment.