Monday, October 13, 2014

W.7.1 - Informative Writing & RI.7.8 Taking Notes from Digital Text

At the end of the day last Friday, we looked at an informative article and recorded some of the characteristics of good informative writing. Students recorded the information in the Writing section of their Thoughtful Logs. Today I posed the following prompt, selecting non-fiction topics that we are reading about in the fictional novel, Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen:
Write an informative article about spirit bears. 
To start this process, I recorded 10/14 (I accidentally wrote tomorrow's date) next to the two characteristics of informative writing that we would be focusing on today. Spirit bears was the topic I modeled with and recording notes about spirit bears from a variety of sources was the process I started today using a media text (video).


I modeled recording notes from a video text entitled National Geographic: Searching for Spirit Bear. I paused the video multiple times to record information about spirit bears on this graphic organizer. Note: all content area teachers are being encouraged to use this same graphic organizer to promote writing in their disciplines.


To have students follow this same process of taking notes about a focused topic from a media source, I gave students the following prompt: Write an informative article about Circle Justice. I emailed students a link to a video about Restorative Justice. Students watched a short video about Restorative Justice as it is used at a high school in Colorado. As students listened, they took notes that would help inform/explain to the public about Circle Justice.

 Here are the notes one student took about Circle Justice as a result of watching the video.
 Here are the notes a different student took about Circle Justice as a result of watching the video.


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