Ideas

__**Map of Neighborhood**__ During the Writing Project this past summer, I was introduced to a new technique for creating writing ideas. We were instructed to draw a map of our childhood neighborhood. So, using crayons/markers/colored pencils, we adults set out on replicating a map of the neighborhood from when we were children. After completion, we shared our maps with others in the Writing Project and told stories/memories from this map. So many ideas and memories were screaming to be written about! I loved this idea and decided to have my students draw a map of their neighborhood and then we shared memories with one another. What a wealth of ideas surfaced! Below are a few of the maps that were drawn by my students.

To help students have a list of ideas to work from, I gave them a picture of a parking lot. On this picture, they could use sticky notes to record ideas that they might like to write about and place them on the parking lot. If they were traveling to school on the bus and the bus went in the ditch. When they got to school they could take a sticky note, write bus in ditch on it, then place the note on their parking lot for future writing ideas! We also have a class parking lot that anyone in the class could contribute to. We could record things that we experienced together as a class, such as a person moving or a book we are reading together. The Parking Lot was 3-hole punched and placed inside their Writing Binder.
 * __The Parking Lot__**

One problem that students have is narrowing down a topic. Sometimes they struggle with a piece of writing because their topic is too general. For instance, they choose to write about how to care for a dog when they could actually narrow their piece down by telling about how they taught their dog to sit. To help demonstrate this lesson, I brought in t-shirts - an Extra-Large, Large, Medium, and Small. I placed these shirts on hangers with their appropriate label on the hanger. So, the Extra-Large t-shirt was hanging from the hanger labelled Extra-Large and so on. I asked students how it feels and looks to wear clothing that is too large or too small. After our discussion, I compared writing to this same feeling. Our topic has to fit "just right". It can't be too large or too small (narrow). I then placed students in groups and handed out sets of 4 cards. On these cards I had written "labels" for my shirts. Each set had an Extra-Large topic, a Large topic, a Medium topic, and a Small topic. Students had to decide in their groups which card should be placed into what category. Each group had the opportunity to place their card on the correct shirt and the class had to decide if it was placed correctly. Following are groups that I made for the t-shirt labels.
 * __Just the Right Size__**
 * state, city, my house, my bedroom
 * living room, table, table top, flower arrangement on table top
 * shopping, department store, jewelry, a pearl necklace
 * pets, dogs, taking care of a puppy, teaching a puppy to sit
 * Florida, Orlando, Disney World, Space Mountain ride
 * kitchen, refrigerator, lunch meats, spoiled turkey
 * weather, hurricane, strong winds, hiding in the hall closet during the storm
 * school, fourth grade, our classroom, my desk