This lesson will cover generating topics for possible Real or Fake paragraphs.
After this lesson you should know / understand what things you should consider when choosing a topic.
Quick Write
The purpose of today's lesson is for students to identify possible topics, begin listing information, and recognize if they need to do any additional research.
Over the course of the unit students will have to write multiple true paragraphs and one fake paragraph. For now, we are just thinking about topics for our true paragraphs.
True paragraphs should largely be based on information students already know. The topics should be about things for which you have experience or knowledge. They should be about things that are not well know, otherwise, it will be very obvious to their entire audience that the paragraph is about something real.
Brainstorming for ideas for possible paragraphs.
For example, writing about a fruit called the Apple will make it very easy for everyone to know it is true, but writing about a fruit from Peru called Chirimoya, will make it harder for the audience to be sure.
Is there a food that you eat that you think other people may not be familiar with? That would make an amazing topic for a paragraph.
Think about things that are familiar to you, but may not be to other people.
Food
Clothing
Activities
Songs
Celebrations
Names
Traditions
Think about interesting and special places you have been to or explored. Writing about the ABBA Museum is something our audience knows well, but what if you write about a place you travelled to or visited or know about that may not be so well known?
Think about the activities you know how to do well. Is there something specific about this activity that you could write about? For example, if I think about windsurfing, if I wrote about a turn called a gybe, that is pretty obvious, but if I write about something in windsurfing called the reverse monkey gybe, that would be more mysterious to people.
Think about things you know how to do. Are there any special skills and/or words that you could describe in a paragraph?
Think of any unusual people that you may know about. Or any amazing animals. Or unusual jobs that people do. Has anyone in your family ever told you a story about something special, or crazy or scary or interesting that has happened in history?
Can you think of any other possible general categories?
Each student will be given an information page to bring home so that they can brainstorm with a guardian for additional topics. We will go through that page together.