Strategy: Paragraph Hamburger (Chiles)
Detailed Description: The "paragraph hamburger" is a writing organizer that visually outlines the key components of a paragraph. Topic sentence, detail sentences, and a closing sentence are the main elements of a good paragraph, and each one forms a different "piece" of the hamburger.
Practical Application: This could be used in a third or fourth-grade class in which students are just being introduced to writing techniques. The teacher explains the parts of the “hamburger” (the topic sentence, the supporting information, and the concluding sentence). The teacher explains to the students the purpose of their narratives, and students decide a topic for their narratives. The teacher then: 1) Asks students to write a topic sentence that clearly indicates what their narrative is going to be about. 2) Have students compose several supporting sentences that give well-chosen details about their narrative; and 3) Instructs students on ways to write a concluding sentence that restates the topic sentence.
TRAP: This strategy is cited in the article The Writing Road: Reinvigorate Your Students' Enthusiasm for Writing written by Regina Richards in 2008. Richards purports that the road to writing consists of two distinct but related paths. Students who successfully travel “these paths often have had teachers and/or parents assisting them to safely navigate their way. The “paragraph hamburger” strategy is designed to reinvigorate students' enthusiasm for writing even if they struggle with learning disabilities.
Richards, R. (2008). The Writing Road: Reinvigorate Your Students' Enthusiasm for Writing. LD Online: The educators’ guide to learning disabilities and ADHD. Retrieved from http://www.ldonline.org/article/5608/.
Strategy: Teaching creative writing through visualization and the five senses (Ramsey)
Detailed Description: Before writing the narrative, students will be required to conceptualize what they are going to write about. They will then list things they see, taste, hear, feel, and smell in the story they are conceptualizing. Students can get together and talk about their place before writing a paragraph or more about the place.
Practical Application: Once students see something in their minds, they have a much easier time writing about it. Any narrative the students will be required to write will be improved by first getting them to use their five senses to describe the situation.
TRAP: The source was featured in a 2015 edition of English Teaching Forum. It was written by Katherine Carter, an English teacher who recently taught English as a second language to university students in Namibia. The article is intended to help teachers of all grade levels get their students to write more descriptive, better narratives.
Carter, Katherine. “Teaching Descriptive Writing through Visualization and the Five Senses” in
English Teaching Forum. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1065665.
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