Saturday, June 22, 2013

3 Icons/3 Minutes, sample sentence


Plain sentence:

The woman walked into the store.


Sentence with icons added:

     A bell at the front of the store clanged as the swiftly opening door crashed into it. In walked a woman straight out of Breakfast at Tiffanys. Her hair was slicked back into an impossibly neat bun. She marched authoritatively to the front counter and dropped a purse, nearly bigger than she was, to the glass with a jangling fwump.
     "One pair of overalls please," she demanded. The please was an afterthought.

-contributed by Whitney Emeigh

Short story kernel: Pedro the Mariachi





Text Structure: A completely made up story

Kernel Essay:

  1. Pedro, a mariachi trumpet player, was playing his first professional gig at a Mexican restaurant.
  1. Suddenly, someone in the audience asked for a song he didn’t know how to play. 
  1. He tried to ask the director how to play his part, but the director only knew his particular part.
  1. He asked the other trumpet player next to him and the man agreed to hum the harmony to Pedro.  
  1. Thanks to his great ear, Pedro was able to pick up the harmony and play it perfectly. 

By Melina Ocampo, Mariachi 


Thursday, June 20, 2013

Weinstein Mat on Steroids



It is 11 x 17 and copy front/back on card stock and laminate.
Heather Dollins, M.S. HEATHER.DOLLINS@granburyisd.org






Friday, June 14, 2013

The STAAR Genre Structures

The STAAR Genre Structures

For an On-Demand Short Story



Kernel Essay

Sam’s Dilemma

Sam looked over, and to his dismay, found the toilet paper roll exhausted.
Beginning to sweat, he searched frantically all about him.
He reached out, straining, to the cabinet under the sink, but his arms were too short.
Sam left defeated, missing a sock.

Joseph Thiemeyer
jthiesmeyer@lfcisd.net





Text Structures in Spanish



Monday, June 10, 2013

Fishing with Grandpa, Color It Up!




We read the essay, "Fishing with Grandpa,"  from the new book, Fun-Size Academic Writing for Serious Learning, (coming from Corwin at the end of the summer) and did the activity, using colors to find the four kinds of text.  That resulted in four icons, four kinds of text, to begin a "writer's tools" list in the classroom.  As they learn more, students can add to their own personal copy of icons in their journals .