My Favorite Transportation

As a part of our writing program, Write From the Beginning, the students are learning to write to explain why. This week the students wrote about their favorite means of transportation. They first created Circle Maps to brainstorm their favorites, then chose one to write about on a Flow Map. The students had to list three reasons why they chose their favorite transportation. They then wrote four sentences using their Thinking Maps. The students were required to use transition words for their three sentences explaining why. After the students wrote (the process took several days), I met with each student individually to edit their work. The students then wrote a final draft of their writing and created art of their favorite transportation.

The Main Idea: Hot Air Balloons

To assess the students understanding of main ideas, we read I Fly Hot-Air Balloons from Reading A-Z. As we read, we charted important details from each section on a Multi-Flow Map. Once finished, we discussed what all of those important details had in common and what the author wanted the students to learn from the text, or the main idea. The students then had to explain the main idea of the story in their own words. They wrote the main idea on a basket that they made out of construction paper. They then created a hot-air balloon to attach to the basket.

The Main Idea: Transportation

As a part of our lessons on how to identify the main idea of texts, we read several books from We Give Books and Reading A-Z about various forms of transportation. Each day we read a new expository text and the students had to verbally identify the main idea of the text. We used Multi-Flow Maps to help chart the details that lead up to the main idea. (Sorry... I did not take a picture of these charts.) After reading about the various types of transporation, the students created a Circle Map of as many examples as they could think of. We then discussed how those examples could be divided into conceptual categories. So, we then created a spider web graphic organizer to sort the examples into the categories of land, air, and water. The students then created a three part foldable to illusrtate one example of transportation from each category. They then wrote at least one fact they learned about that mode of transportation under the flap.