Building Academic Writing Skills (1)

One activity to try!

With TELPAS coming up, here is an activity to practice building that academic language!

What is it? This activity asks groups of students to respond to pictures or photos related to an academic concept. The images reflect different perspectives which deepen student understanding of the topic. Students respond well to this activity because the visual representation helps make the concepts more comprehensible, and there is an element of secrecy that they love. In “Writing Windows,” students brainstorm lists of words specific to the content being studied, and these can be referenced while writing. The lists inspire and motivate students when they begin to write their descriptions.

Directions: ● Organize students into groups of 4 and give each student in the group a folder containing a different image on the current topic of study and a 5x8 index card. Topic: Renewable Resources

Directions: ● Ask students to keep their image a secret from others in their group.

Directions: ● Have students record their responses to the following directions on the index card. ★ List everything in the image ★ List adjectives that describe the objects in the image. ★ List all action verbs in the image ★ Pencils down. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in your image. Look around. ★ What else can you see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Touch? What are the people in the image wearing and saying? Record your thoughts.

Directions: ● Give students a second index card with a sentence stem that corresponds to the image. Ask them to use the stem to write a paragraph from a perspective within the image. I’ve grown vegetables on this land This year we have been blessed for over 80 years, but... with many calves.. This water sure does quench my What a sunny, calm day we’ve thirst after... had all week. I sure hope that...

Directions: ● Give students time to share their writing with the others in their groups. After they share, students show the image in their folders to the group members.