How do you help your students become better writers - the genius ladder! The genius ladder helps turn boring, blah sentences into genius paragraphs. We start with a blah sentence - a 3 word sentence and make it a spicy sentence by adding an adjective. After that, we run it up the genius ladder by adding an extender - my students love using their brainies, especially the because clapper. The students practice each level orally before they do any writing which helps my ELL students (and all the students) to get ideas for writing. I love the practice of doing oral writing first and then writing. It has really raised the writing of my students.
Today, the genius ladder came in handy, I was working with students on their writing and we were talking about adding details and I showed the students how to take a blah sentence and make it into an extender sentence. I do not have the genius ladder template but I will be getting it ready so that each student can have their own.
The genius ladder is available from Whole Brain Teaching as a free download under free ebooks. How do you help students add details to their writing?
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