file cards

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2003 : January : 26

file cards
By pjm

I had a group of very low students one year with a similar assignment. What I did was type up a requirement for them to follow. something like this
you need 5 paragraphs
1. name of state, capital city and population
2.
major lakes or rivers
3 geography of the state (low lands, plains state etc)
4 places of interest
5 closing paragraph
then I gave the kids 5 file cards and had them number them 1 - 5. we began research even though they still had no idea how to write the paragraph. On file card 1 I had them write a complete sentence that say something like I am researching the state

of Maine. then I had them look up the capital city and write that in a sentence....and finally the population. Then I told the kids that they had written their first paragraph....the kids were amazed. We did this with each of the file cards and they wrote a passable paragraph. Was it great no but it did build their confidence and they decided that they could write paragraphs. Yes it is very basic but with these low kids that's where you need to begin.