Reading Writing Day 16
Independent Writing: Drafting a Lead Materials:
• Students’ writing notebooks • Chart paper and markers • A document camera or an overhead • Getting to Yes: Student Handbook
Objectives Students will be able to: • Identify elements of successful leads; and • Rehearse several leads to their persuasive letter.
Preparation Choose a student letter from Getting to Yes to use as a mentor text during your minilesson. Choose a letter that does NOT have a strong lead, such as the one by Odalys. If you don’t have access to a document camera, you can write the lead on a chart.
Instructional Activities Minilesson Explain that when you’re writing a letter, you want to entice the reader to keep reading. In this case, the reader may not want to read the letter because it’s asking him or her to change in some way, and most of us do not like changing our minds or behaviors. So it is especially important to catch and hold the reader’s attention at the beginning. Show students the model letter that you’ve chosen for this lesson, and ask students to comment on the lead. Is it enticing? Would a reluctant reader keep reading? If not (and you deliberately chose a model that does NOT have a strong lead), what do they suggest? Use their ideas to draft a new lead on chart paper, a document camera or an overhead, and name the strategy they use. Make sure the thesis is clearly stated in the revision, but be open to whatever strategy students suggest for improving the sample lead – they’ll have a chance to try something else in a minute. Celebrate students’ revision of this lead, but tell them that there are more good ideas where this one came from. Ask them to work with a partner for five minutes to draft a new lead for the letter, using a different strategy. If the class version used rhetorical questions, maybe the partners could try an anecdote. If the class version approached the reader with deference, maybe the partners could try shaming the reader. This is just 112
Chicago Public Schools - Summer Bridge 2011