need ideas

[maha]

Hi, I am new in the business. I am an ESL teacher and I was assigned to teach writing to grade five. I need interesting approaches to teach my terribly weak students the writing process and paragraph structure. Or if u can give me some useful websites that would be great too.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Marie]

sentence strips

To teach organization in writing, have the students arrange pre-cut sentence strips into the correct order: topic sentence first, details, conclusion. You can make the whole paragraph as easy or difficult as you want! Then you can have students progress into writing their own paragraphs and cutting up the strips for other students to try to organize.

Another way to teach descritive language or word choice, or in this case adjectives in English, might be to have students try different foods and write about how each one tastes using new or different adjectives that they have been learning (I don't know the level of your learners). A jolly rancher is a great starting point... "tart and tangy like putting your tongue on the end of a battery." Hope this helps!

 

[cherie]

To teach paragraph structure to my fourth graders I had them make candy hamburgers. The topic and concluding sentences were graham crackers, I used marshmallows for the patties, died coconut for lettuce and for ketchup and mustard I used colored icing. I've noticed an improvement in their paragraph structure already! I just need to remind them to think about the hamburgers they made when writing paragraphs.