Thanks to Chandy Garner, a first grade teacher from Sonoma Mountain Elementary School in Petaluma, CA for sharing how she uses the T-Chart with her primary students.
Chandy glued colored paper to a poster board, and then laminated it. She is able to quickly plan T-Charts with her entire class that model the organization and color coding for an informative or opinion paragraph.
The photograph shows a chart that her class was making together after learning about Johnny Appleseed. Notice her use of picture clues for the Big Ideas. In a follow up lesson, the students will go back and pull Supporting Details from the text for the yellow paper. Words can also be added to the picture clues to help students build their vocabularies.
After the T-Chart is completed, students can take turns “writing” the paragraph orally, using the teacher provided topic sentence and conclusion.
The board can then be erased and reused. Chandy and her students have planned and written paragraphs together in many content areas. She is now using multiple boards for her students to plan paragraphs independently in collaborative groups.
Chandy is confident that her students will head to 2nd grade with great understandings in place for planning and writing a Level 1 paragraph.
Way to go Chandy. Thanks for sharing your wonderful idea! Perhaps this would be a great way for you to review paragraph writing with your students this spring.
If any of you have ideas you’d like to share with The Write Tools, please email them to us.
