Taking advantage of the tournament brackets that are so prevalent at this time of year, I organized a Super Sentence tourny in my classes today. All week we have analyzed our common text (Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye) sentence by sentence, looked to our independent reading for models, pulled plums from our own writing, and composed sentences that we thought would captivate and delight an audience.
After ten minutes of tweaking, the brackets were posted and students read their gems head to head. I gave grammar advice in context, but word choice and content was all theirs, and the judges were their peers. For each pairing, the winner got a lollipop and the right to move on, and the loser got to sit down.
There were some beautiful sentences, and I'd like to say that those writers won every time, and sometimes they did, but a crucial concept here was audience. In two of my five classes, kids who are not generally known for their writing rocked the brackets, and it was awesome to see them experience that unexpected success. Both of those boys were composing as they went along, scribbling furiously between rounds so that they would have something to read when it was their turn. One of them crafted exquisite and complex sentences of suspense; I confess that my jaw literally dropped at the end of one. The other took a more vulgar approach, although it was no less successful. His sentences involved a hair ball, someone urinating his pants, and an ugly sister.
In the end, these guys met the same fate. The clock was their enemy. When it came to the final round, they each had to forfeit because they hadn't prepared well enough in advance, and they didn't have anything to read, which was really a pity.
(Click here for today's sample of my 6th grade students' response to the 2011 SOLSC challenge.)
Hmmm, layers of lessons here for your young writers. I love that those guys experienced success as judged by their peers...and you! Interesting that competition is so powerful a motivator in this situation.
ReplyDeleteWill we every see some of these sentences in your future posts? I wish sometimes I had more time than 18 weeks--or at least that I was better prepared--so I could do tourneys like this. Care to share any rules or guidelines? I'm still seeing that even those at college-age (especially those at college-age) need practice on what is a sentence. And even more practice on the fine way to write a paragraph!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth E.