Writing effective sentences using images and post its.

For my senior students to prepare for their exams, I have had to reteach and remind them to plan and structure their essays to support the writing process.  I have found in the past, that the boys especially, struggle to start a paragraph let alone write a whole essay, so my focus was to look at how to write a good effective starting sentence.

After 2 weeks of solid content on the conflict with Israel and Palestine, I went through the 'How to write effective essays in Social Studies' lesson again with the emphasis on 5 ways to start a sentence.  I printed off and laminated each slide and made the 5 sentence starter ones bigger.

"How to write an effective essay" on the wall

5 sentence types in A3

To provoke their thoughts around our context, I gave out photos with provoking images on them.  I asked them to choose an effective sentence type to create, based on what was happening in the photos. By giving them a different point of discussion to start with, I hoped it would help provide the class, especially the visual learners, a way to connect their writing to their learning.  I then encouraged them to write the sentences on post it notes, to stick to the A3 sheets on the wall.

I made mini cards with the meanings to give out if needed.

Reflections:
The skill of using different visual mediums as a source of writing is probably a skill that needs further development and use in my classroom.  Some of the students found value in the images where as others, it proved harder for them to summarise in a power sentence, what the image showed.  For the more capable students, they were able to transfer the knowledge of what was behind the image (which we had been learning about) and use that knowledge alongside the photo to provide some good power sentences.  The post it notes helped students to share their sentences and would allow them to refer to a variety for the future, if they struggled to start a paragraph.  The actual physical nature of moving and putting their post-its on the wall was something that the boys liked to do, whereas the girls needed prompting to get up-they were quite happy to show me their sentences at their seats.

Post it notes help students share their sentences

Next steps:  I can see that the students engaged in writing power sentences the most which was interesting.  Now I hope to support them in writing power paragraphs, which will be my next goal.