April 15, 2013

 1.  Write about trampolines or bridges!

A trampoline bridge over the River Seine, Paris.
It's for real -- but only as a proposed concept so far! 
 See http://travel.cnn.com/trampoline-bridge-paris-206291

No computer lab today.

2.  The Power of Prewriting 
We practiced the following Prewriting Techniques: 
1) Freewriting: Just start writing and write for about two minutes about anything that comes into your mind. The point is to not stop writing during those two minutes. You're not writing about anything in particular, just whatever comes to mind. If your mind goes blank, just write blank, blank, or something else. This technique will sometimes free up your mind when you have writers' block, or may generate ideas you could write about.

2) Focused freewriting: 

 roads,  red,  or  rain.

Again, you are going to just write for two minutes without stopping. This time, you will focus on one of these words: roads, red, rain. Select one of those words, and write anything that comes to mind about that word during the two minutes. This can help you discover what you know about a subject, or help you think of different ways to look at it.

3) Asking questions: Select a subject you know about, then use the newspaper reporter's question words to generate information about that subject. Here's an example:

Baseball:

who: players, coaches, umpires, fans, .

 . .
what: play ball! bats, balls, mound, bases, backstop, hot dogs, baseball caps, uniforms,

 . . .
where: arena, field, Wrigley Field, back lot, school,

 . . .
why: fun! money for pros, fun to watch, for the hot dogs, The All-American past time, exercise, get outside

,
when: summertime, night games, day games, weekends, recess, P.E. . . .

Now you pick a topic and list answers to each of the "W's" 
another sport      a holiday      a event     a . . . . . .
3. Work on articles for our "newspaper" or on your children's books.
We will not have computer lab today.