Today our fourth graders continued building off of yesterday's main idea sort. In this 20 minute lesson, the groups wrote a main idea sentence for each main idea blurb on a strip of paper. The only rule was that they had to use a word referent in place of the blurb. For example, instead of using the word fair in explaining why we have rules, the group used the words "to keep things even" Then, they took their slip with the sentence on it and scattered them on the floor like I had done with the main idea stars yesterday. Students chose one slip, that was not from their own group, and found the main idea blurb that it belonged to. Quick, easy, and now we have eight frameworks with main idea sentences planned!
The last step was to then have the students write introductions and conclusions for the frameworks that we had created throughout the last two days. This was a great refresher for them and helped to drive the point that your plan of your piece should be evident in both your intro and conclusion.
