I found this great download on TPT! The articles were perfect for my 6th-grade students. We annotated the expository piece as a class and wrote a summarizing paragraph about what they expect to learn in the article on Martin Luther King Jr. Then, students took notes on the templates provided. Great practice on notetaking skills! Finally, I had my students write a reflective paragraph on Martin Luther King Jr. at their table group and made sure that they included word referents from the chart that they made last week.
The packet from The Core Coaches includes other pieces on Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, and Ruby Bridges. I let my students get into small groups of 3-4 students and repeat the process that we had done earlier but changing to one of these additional pieces. Annotate, Summarize, Take Notes, and then Reflect. It turned out to be an amazing week of reading and writing! Oh and I almost forgot- I also had my students write a paragraph that needed to be edited with capitalization, punctuation, subject/verb agreement, past tense verbs and homophone errors on the person that they read and studied about! They incorporated facts that they had learned and then wrote an informational paragraph that they exchanged with a friend!
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G My students laughed at me when I told them that they were learning more from doing it wrong than right:) You have to know the rules to break them, and point out your mistakes!
Remember: Introduce and define your skill through published examples! You can use EW lessons with any text in your classroom.
Kylene
kreed@empoweringwriters.com