K-2 Archives - Ideas by Jivey

Higher Order Thinking Questions for Grammar and Writing

October 30, 2018

We don’t often think of using higher order thinking questions, or Bloom’s Taxonomy above level 1 and 2, within grammar and writing instruction. In fact, when looking at sample higher order thinking question stems to use within your classroom, many of them specifically relate to reading and math!

For students to reach their highest potential, we have to teach them to do more than just recall and recite facts. Higher order thinking questions help students learn to understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and CREATE information rather than simply recalling it. We’ve seen the ineffectiveness of memorizing grammar rules. We know it is important for students to actually understand and apply their grammar understanding to their writing.

Isn’t it our goal for students to create new information using “old” understanding? So that means we want students to formulate more complex, quality sentences using what they have observed and learned.

I’d love to help you tackle this in your classroom!

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Can students really think critically about grammar?!

Higher order thinking questions should also be used in grammar instruction. Download this free higher order thinking questions poster to guide you in transforming your classroom conversations!

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Yes! Let’s think about teaching adjectives with higher order thinking questions… we need students to do more than remember a list of adjectives, or memorize the definition, “adjectives describe nouns.”

We want students to produce writing, using adjectives EFFECTIVELY. Students should understand the purpose of using many forms of adjectives in order to choose which adjectives to use in their writing. To get there, students should be categorizing and classifying adjectives. This also means students need to see many models of adjectives being used in order to identify and judge the words.

Asking the right questions, providing the appropriate models, and holding those high-value discussions will lead students to transfer this grammar skill to their writing.

Let’s stop asking students to recite and start helping students apply and model!

If you’ve never had discussions with your students about grammar and language, it might be hard for you to imagine that this could even happen. These discussions I’m talking about don’t include lectures. They are not, “read this and put it in your own words” types of assignments. They are actual conversations with students where they are transferring understanding!

It also might not be something you’ve ever considered planning. Since we don’t have many examples of higher order thinking question stems for grammar and writing, it doesn’t come as naturally to us as recall questions do for these subject areas.

Thinking about the topic of adjectives from above, here are some examples of questions that can be asked to achieve those critical thinking and high-value discussions needed for TRUE transfer!

What do you notice about the way the author described [name noun] in the sentence?
How can you sort these different words/adjectives?
Why do you think the author used [name adjective] instead of another adjective?
How would you describe [name noun]?
How could you change [name adjective] to be a stronger descriptor?
What would happen if we changed [name adjective] to another adjective?

Of course, you wouldn’t ask all of these questions in one discussion! Notice the level of each question and how they progress in the list. We want to move students through the levels of critical thinking naturally for learning to be reflected.

Don’t forget those free sample grammar and writing higher order thinking questions delivered to your inbox!

Have you heard about mentor sentences?

All of this high-value discussion and critical thinking comes very naturally through the use of mentor sentences! And bonus: it also checks all the boxes of the language comprehension strands on Scarborough’s Reading Rope, supporting the science of reading!

Through discussions and seeing skills in context, students are able to understand the author’s purpose for using specific words and phrases. They are able to compare words and phrases within the lesson as well as from other weeks of learning. Students will learn how to analyze what the author is trying to communicate, as well as have a better grasp of the nuances of language. They will examine a writer’s style and mechanics, and learn to apply those skills to their own writing.

Get more information about mentor sentences for your grade level here, including directions, videos, and resources!

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3-5, K-2, Mastering Mentor Sentences

Suggestions For Making Mentor Sentences STICK In Writing

February 15, 2017

Ideas by Jivey explains how to incorporate mentor sentences into your writing time to ensure that the grammar, mechanics, and style lessons you teach are sticking!

I am often asked by people who use mentor sentences, “How can I get the kids to carry these skills over into their writing?”

Remember, the idea of using mentor sentences is to move AWAY from teaching grammar in isolation. This means, don’t have a “mentor sentence time” in isolation either! Mentor sentences must be woven into the fabric of your writing time. I know that sometimes your schedule may not allow for mentor sentences to happen at the start of your writing time, but no matter when it occurs in your day, your writing time should still include what is happening in mentor sentences.

During writing, teachers must lead lessons (and/or model) about organization, ideas, content, word choice, voice, style, and conventions. That’s a LOT of components to be taught, right? Luckily, mentor sentences covers a lot of your word choice, style, and conventions lessons and modeling! And just like with anything else, the more exposure they have to these components, the more they will understand and start to actually use them! But, of course, showing them in a ten minute lesson and then “moving on” to something else in writing is NOT going to help them apply those word choice, style, and conventions lessons.

First, I would urge you to make the mentor sentence student notebook a RESOURCE and not just another notebook. You can read all about how I set up student notebooks here. If you have students draft OUTSIDE of their mentor sentence/writing resource notebooks, they can actually flip through the notebook as a resource to get ideas. (It’s difficult to flip pages in a notebook you are actually writing in, right?) This is something you will have to model and train your students to do, but after a while, you’ll find that the students use their notebook as a resource unprompted!

Let’s look at how I would schedule writing lessons to make sure mentor sentence lessons are woven in to writing time:

On Monday, you introduce the sentence and talk about what the students notice during the Mentor Sentences lesson. Because you’ve only introduced the sentence, this is the perfect day to also use the mentor text that the sentence is from to get in an organization, content, or ideas lesson to work on during writing. This lesson and text model should be referred to all week long, as well as the focus skill from your Mentor Sentence lesson (which you’ll introduce on Tuesday).

On Tuesday, students work on seeing how the parts of speech work together in the sentence. This should also be the day you focus solely on the focus skill from the mentor sentence. You can introduce (or review) the skill by using the Interactive Activity Companions that go with each mentor sentence lesson. This will be your “writing mini-lesson.” Typically, these are conventions lessons, but sometimes are word choice or style lessons (figurative language, descriptive language, etc). Have the students practice this skill in their own writing after the focus skill mini-lesson.

Wednesday can become REVISION DAY in your classroom during writing time. Practice revising with the mentor sentence, then have students revise for that same focus skill in their own writing.

But what if my students aren’t done drafting?

Friends, writing is a CONSTANT PROCESS. We must teach our students that revision (and editing, for that matter) must be done many times and over the entire writing piece, not just when they are “done.” Think back to when you had to write those dreaded papers in college (and maybe some of you are still now as you get higher degrees). How many times did you read and re-read and add and change and delete before you EVER came to that last paragraph? This is a skill our students should learn, too. In fact, just writing this blog post, I have moved paragraphs, added sentences or phrases to be more clear, and changed words several times already… and I’m not finished! 🙂

So yes, on Wednesday, no matter how long their writing piece might be, have students work on revising. You could even have students look back at older writing pieces (not just current) to look at how they could improve them.

Thursday is the students’ FAVORITE day during Mentor Sentences: Imitation Day! Students seriously love this day, so work that love for all it’s worth! After imitating the mentor sentence, have students work to use that same sentence structure in the writing piece they are working with at that time. Of course, this should not be all they do during writing that day. Aside from trying out the sentence structure in their writing, they should still be working on applying relevant skills they have already learned. (This is a great day to encourage them to “flip through” their notebook for ideas!)

On Friday, you’ll give students the assessment to see how much they understood the focus skill from the week. If desired, you can deliver another organization, content, or ideas lesson for students to work on during writing, or students can continue applying relevant skills they have already learned.

Please understand that this is a framework, or outline, to help give you an idea of how you can incorporate mentor sentences into writing, but how you deliver it all is dependent upon your style (small groups vs. whole group, conferring, etc). This is certainly not the only way to “get it all in” and “make it stick” but it is what worked for me!

Check out a video series I created to Weave Mentor Sentences into Writing!

If you want even more IN-DEPTH step-by-step help with implementing mentor sentences, check out my courses!

If you are looking for guidance to pick the “just-right” bundle for your needs, click below!

For even more ideas, follow my Pinterest board!

Follow Ideas By Jivey’s board Mentor Sentences on Pinterest.

K-2, Mentor Texts

Strategies at Work: The Bear Ate Your Sandwich (K-2)

October 7, 2016

Ideas by Jivey presents a mentor text lesson on vocabulary for K-2 students with the book, The Bear Ate Your Sandwich. Free vocabulary cards and activities are provided so you can teach this in your classroom tomorrow!

I am teaming up with The Reading Crew to bring you all you need to teach some amazing mentor text lessons this fall!

The Bear Ate Your Sandwich is the story of a bear, lost in a city. He comes across many things in this “strange new forest,” and one of them is YOUR SANDWICH! But wait… was it really a bear that ate it? You’ll have to read to find out! 🙂

Click if you’d like to purchase the book using my Amazon affiliate link!

This book is full of wonderful vocabulary words that your young kiddos should learn. I have created a lesson to help you teach some of the words in the story.

Before reading the book, help students understand the words they are going to hear in the story. Display the sandwich cards with the sentence and picture clue. Talk to students about what they think the word might mean based on the context and the picture.

While reading the book, students should listen for the vocabulary words. They can snap when they hear it. Talk again about the meaning to make sure they understand the word and how it is used.

After reading the book, give students the vocabulary activity. They should shade the sandwiches with the word and definition that match the same color.

Grab the cards and activity here!

And, of course, you have to get the mentor sentence for this book, too! (Not familiar with mentor sentences? Check them out here!) It will be a great way to extend the vocabulary word, “interesting” as they use it in their own sentences.

Make sure to check out the rest of the mentor text lessons from this year below! This is The Reading Crew’s Second Annual Fall Mentor Text Hop! (Did you miss last year? Click here to see all the great fall texts from last year!)

An InLinkz Link-up

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3-5, K-2, Mastering Mentor Sentences

Setting Up Mentor Sentence Notebooks

August 15, 2016

Have you been wondering how you should set up student mentor sentence notebooks?

Ideas by Jivey shares how she sets up mentor sentence notebooks with students and offers ideas and freebies to help you get your students organized, too!

**Disclaimer: How you set up your notebook should match your organizational style in your classroom. This blog post contains ideas of ways that worked for me!**

My students used their writing notebook for mentor sentences as well. All of the writing workshop lessons were done from the FRONT of the notebook, and mentor sentences were done from the BACK. That way, they could always find their mentor sentence lessons.

You could put a cover or label on this back cover to help students remember!

Keep reading for some free ones!! 🙂

I skip the last page (which is page 1 of the mentor sentence section).

I skipped the last page because I wanted my students to work on a double page spread for the week. This ensured there was enough room for the daily invitations as well as the interactive activity for the focus skill we were working on that week. I do not have a preference for how my students section off their pages, as long as all of the work is there.

This student continued down the page each day.

This student made sections on her page to indicate when she ended each day.

This notebook is from a teacher who used spiral notebooks. She still had her students use a double page spread with the invitations on the opposite side as the previous examples. These students also partitioned the invitations page into four sections- one for each day.

(The star indicated that this student was chosen as a sentence to celebrate.)

My students never ran out of room in their notebook, but I used the notebook as a resource, not a place to draft.

They completed mini-lessons and activities in the notebook for writing craft, grammar, and conventions (writing workshop from the FRONT, mentor sentences from the BACK). They used a yellow legal pad to write on for their drafting time.

WHY A LEGAL PAD?

For one, since I want the notebook to be used DURING writing time, I don’t want them writing in the notebook. They can’t flip through a notebook as they write in it.

Second, what kid doesn’t like to write on colored paper?

I could find packs of these pretty cheap at Wal-Mart, too, so that was a bonus!

My students skip lines when drafting so they can go back to edit and revise on the lines between. We also loved using Rainbow Editing and Revising, which you can check out in this blog post if you are interested.

Need Covers or Labels?

It might help your students remember which side to open, or which notebook is their mentor sentence notebook, with some covers or labels!

In this free download on TPT, I have provided covers and labels that you can use for your mentor sentence notebooks in color and black and white. Enjoy!

Mentor Sentences Data: Case Study

June 24, 2016

Ideas by Jivey breaks down the data for you, comparing beginning and end of year writing samples in upper grades and kindergarten from teachers who did and did not use mentor sentences. You will be shocked at the difference!

If you’ve been considering using mentor sentences and need more proof than the feedback you read on TpT, this is the post for you!

If you are all about the numbers, then you are going to love what I have for you!

In the upper grades, mentor sentences provide students the opportunity to notice and imitate grammar and craft in well-written sentences from mentor texts you love and use in the classroom. This is your opportunity to stop teaching grammar in isolation and teach mechanics, grammar, and craft together in your writing time.

Jeff Anderson says in his book, Mechanically Inclined, “Mechanics and grammar are inherently linked to craft… instead of separating them into different lessons, they should be merged whenever possible.” Check out more books from Jeff Anderson about mentor sentences here!

By integrating your grammar and writing together, students will apply what they’ve learned to their own writing! I know this from my experience and from the experiences of others, but I wanted to give you some hard evidence, too.

I created a rubric to score all of the writing samples (used for beginning and end of the year samples from all students). Mentor sentences improve style, grammar, and mechanics, so those are the only areas I scored. This rubric was used to score the upper grade students:

In the lower grades, mentor sentences provide students the opportunity to read, learn vocabulary and/or grammar skills, and imitate grammar and craft in well-written sentences from mentor texts you love and use in the classroom. By using this balanced literacy approach, students will make the reading and writing connection!

This was the rubric specifically for K-2 students in the areas of style, grammar, and mechanics:

Here are some great successes from the case study:

•There was a 42% increase in the number of highly effective students using mentor sentences in the area of style. This is 23% higher than the growth of highly effective students who were not using mentor sentences. There was a 52% increase in the number of effective AND highly effective students using mentor sentences in the area of style. This is 25% higher than the growth of effective AND highly effective students who were not using mentor sentences.

•There was a 27% increase in the number of highly effective students using mentor sentences in the area of grammar. This is 15% higher than the growth of highly effective students who were not using mentor sentences. There was a 52% increase in the number of effective AND highly effective students using mentor sentences in the area of grammar. This is 21% higher than the growth of effective AND highly effective students who were not using mentor sentences.

•There was a 26% increase in the number of highly effective students using mentor sentences in the area of mechanics. This is 19% higher than the growth of highly effective students who were not using mentor sentences. There was a 42% increase in the number of effective AND highly effective students using mentor sentences in the area of mechanics. This is 15% higher than the growth of effective AND highly effective students who were not using mentor sentences.

What I found MOST impressive was the difference not just in the growth, but the AMOUNT of growth when using mentor sentences. Check this out! 46% of the students who learned using mentor sentences improved in at least one area by two or three levels. This is 29% more than the students who did not learn using mentor sentences!

Download the complete case study to see more about specific grades as well:

I hope this helps you see the difference mentor sentences can make in your students’ learning AND your teaching! You can see all of my mentor sentence products in my TpT store.

If you want even more IN-DEPTH step-by-step help with implementing mentor sentences, check out my courses!

If you are looking for guidance to pick the “just-right” bundle for your needs, click below!

3-5, K-2, Mastering Mentor Sentences

Stop Teaching Grammar in Isolation!

May 24, 2016

Ideas by Jivey reviews research-based reasons why grammar in isolation doesn't work. Teach grammar in context using mentor sentences and students will become better writers!

One of the questions I get asked the most about using mentor sentences is, “Don’t you review all the grammar concepts before starting mentor sentences?”

And my answer is always, “Nope!”

Now, I am not “one of those” telling you to stop teaching grammar. Understanding grammar is beneficial to proper communication. Instead, grammar should be taught in context- not in isolation.

Expecting students to “find” errors in a sentence that they’ve never seen before isn’t going to help students learn grammar or become better writers.

Simply telling students what an adverb, adjective, or preposition is and having them “find” those parts of speech in random lists doesn’t help them utilize it in their own writing.

Diagramming or labeling a sentence just for the sake of labeling doesn’t help students write more effectively.

Showing students well-written sentences and discussing why these sentences are excellent will help them know what to do in their own writing. Using the same sentence the students have studied and discussed to later practice editing skills (alter a few things about the sentence for students to identify) will help them apply those skills in their own writing.

Explaining parts of speech when seeing/identifying them in context will help students understand them. Practicing with those parts of speech in writing and speaking will help the skill “stick” and usage is more likely in writing later.

Labeling the sentence to discuss how parts of speech are used in context will help students see how the words work together to form an awesome sentence that they can imitate in their own writing.

**note the difference from the isolated labeling: students are discussing why and how they know the parts of speech they are labeling vs. just diagramming and moving on.**

I know what you’re thinking… “At the beginning of the year, how can we expect students to find everything we want them to find about the weekly mentor sentence?”

Simple answer: You don’t!

Students will begin to “soak up” the language and the skills as you consistently use mentor sentences. I promise! It will take some time and a few weeks of modeling the expectations.

And as for “finding everything” – not in the beginning! When you start, take baby steps and work up to “everything.” Will they all understand all the skills at the same time? Of course not- just like everything else you teach, students are going to be all over the map when it comes to understanding… but the GREAT thing about using mentor sentences is the spiral of the basic skills every week!

Their mentor sentence notebook also becomes a resource and reference tool for their writing!

Do you own any of my mentor sentence products? You can check them out in my store!

They are perfect for all levels of learners- from ELL and students with disabilities all the way to gifted students! Mariane R. says about using the mentor sentences products in my store: This has to be my absolute favorite. The lessons are easy to follow and use and my students have been getting a lot out of each week’s lessons. I teach in a special education classroom for students with hearing loss. A lot of resources and products they cannot understand or access but they have really gotten in to these lessons and I have seen improvement in both their comprehension and their writing.

Have you used mentor sentences in your classroom to replace your isolated grammar instruction? Tell us about how it went in the comments! I love to hear from you!

If you want even more IN-DEPTH step-by-step help with implementing mentor sentences, check out my courses!

Higher Order Thinking Questions for Grammar and Writing

I’d love to help you tackle this in your classroom!

Can students really think critically about grammar?!

Let’s stop asking students to recite and start helping students apply and model!

Have you heard about mentor sentences?

PIN FOR LATER:

Suggestions For Making Mentor Sentences STICK In Writing

Check out a video series I created to Weave Mentor Sentences into Writing!

If you are looking for guidance to pick the “just-right” bundle for your needs, click below!

Strategies at Work: The Bear Ate Your Sandwich (K-2)

Grab the cards and activity here!

PIN FOR LATER:

Setting Up Mentor Sentence Notebooks

WHY A LEGAL PAD?

Need Covers or Labels?

Mentor Sentences Data: Case Study

If you are looking for guidance to pick the “just-right” bundle for your needs, click below!

Stop Teaching Grammar in Isolation!

If you are looking for guidance to pick the “just-right” bundle for your needs, click below!

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