http://www.authorsasheroes.org/2013/06/audrey-wood_7.html
Since Audrey Wood had so many wonderful Mentor Texts, it was another easy choiceboard to create. After I created the choiceboard, I created the prewriting sheets that would lend themselves to assisting in the assignment. I modeled each choice and then students were able to pick 1-2 writing activities they wanted to try. Completing this was their "turn-in" for the week. Below is a copy of the choiceboard along with a few student samples of each activity. Click on the picture or links to print your own copies.
Blue Sky is the PERFECT simple story for students to work on adjectives and nouns. Students picked a noun and then came up with a variety of adjectives to describe that noun, just like Audrey Wood did in Blue Sky. Some students extended this activity and came up with adjectives to describe the noun that were also written in an antonym format. Last, but not least, they changed the font on each page to help depict the adjective JUST LIKE Audrey Wood!
Below is the same concept from Blue Sky but not using verbs to describe the noun. Both activities are great grammar review and the challenge is to think of ideas that have a logical organization.
Silly Sally was excellent practice for students to work on their sentence fluency. They created fictional characters' names using alliteration. Then they brainstormed words with some common onset and rimes on the prewriting sheet below.They used the rhyming words to create complete sentences. Finally, they put their sentences in an order that made sense. These were silly and gave us lots of laughs in the author's chair. It was a great way to practice the craft of writing rhymes and using alliteration to create sentence fluency.
I'm Quick as a Cricket is the perfect story to teach similes and have students practice using this type of figurative language to make stories come to life. Below is the prewriting form that I created so that students could begin by brainstorming a topic to create similes around. Most students started by describing themselves using similes modeled after Audrey Wood. A few students even picked a different topic as a challenge! The student example is from a Kindergartner.
Ten Little Fish inspired many students to make their own book using a specific number pattern for the organization. The number pattern could be simple or complex depending on the student's math abilities. This was a more complex story to write and students had to come up with logical reasons for their main characters to either multiply or divide. Below is a very simple example of a 1st grade student's story. It has a clear organization - perhaps your class can help edit it or give suggestions on what this author could have done to elaborate more.
Finally we created our "We Can" anchor chart as a whole class to remind us of all of the skills and techniques that we learned from Audrey Wood. This poster is then hung on the classroom wall as a reminder. Students often refer back to it for story ideas when they have time during 'open' writing workshop time.
