Spring SAVY 2019, Day 5 – Witty Wordplay (1st/2nd)
We are as witty as a fox when we are playing with words, as smooth as silk when we are writing, and cool as cucumbers when we are presenting our writing in the Author’s Spotlight at the end of our morning. The author’s techniques and writing systems we looked at this morning through mentor books and silly example books were homophones, homonyms, and similies. Some of the books we read were Heron Street, and My Friend Is As Sharp As a Pencil. We also had a “pun time with riddles and puns throughout our morning as we wrote. In addition, it was important for us to review how to write persuasively to convince others to adopt our opinions on topics or to just share our opinions, so one of the choice center rotations was a repeat from last week, Persuasive Writing. Students had the option to choose their own topic for their penned persuasive writing, or to write about the topic: “Should all indoor spiders be killed?”
When we began writing, you could almost not even hear a pin-drop in the room because our writers were enamored and magnetized with their individual work! The fantastic exceptions to writing as quiet as a mouse, were when someone would excitedly jump up and down and ask us to read what they just wrote or were in the process of writing! These are the moments I live for as an instructor when young writers are dazed for days when they see the sea of their abilities!
We are really beginning to understand how the language of words and writing are a system of communicating a message or purpose to readers and each technique has its own system of rules to accomplish these goals as a writer. One student even added a thought to system outputs by saying that feelings are an output of a language system and we also identified laughter as an output.
It is hard to believe that next week is our final spring SAVY class, but we are looking forward to sharing our witty word play writing and learning with you, parents, from 11:15-11:45 at the parent Open House. Due to the large number of activities Vanderbilt has had over the course of our SAVY classes, we have been rotating between two buildings, Wyatt and Payne, so our administration will let you know where or class will be next week for the Open House.
Thank you,
Karen Tyson