My sixth-grade class completed this unit in Social Studies and English on WWII. This is one of my favorite units that I do each year! I changed the finished product up a bit this year, as my students were struggling with different concepts and needed a little more practice.
First, my students annotated an expository article on a force used in WWII. The groups chose between battleships and submarines, aircraft carriers and bombers, or tanks and ground forces. Once finished annotating, they created a word referent chart for their force. Over the next two days, they researched and wrote ten interesting facts and created a giant replica of their force to hang in the hall with their finished writing pieces.
One of my biggest struggles with this year's class has been having sentence variety and structure in their writing. So for this lesson, I had the students begin or include specific skills and concepts that I had taught over the year into their sentences.
Here is a list of what had to be included in the ten sentences:
1. Begin the sentence with a noun.
2. Begin the sentence with a verb. Bonus if they included an adverb following the verb.
3. Begin the sentence with an adjective. (This is perfect for starting your sentence with a word referent!)
4. Begin the sentence with a preposition.
5. Begin the sentence with an onomatopoeia.
6. Include hyperbole in the sentence.
7. Include a transitional word or phrase to show cause and effect.
8. Include a transitional word or phrase to show two similar ideas.
9. Include a transitional word or phrase to show an example.
10. Include a transitional word or phrase to show two opposing ideas.
Check out the finished products hanging outside my classroom. If you can't tell from all of my posts- I take up all of the wall space in my hallway😂