Writing about Writing: An Extended Metaphor Assignment

Student Interactives

Printouts

Preparation

 

STUDENT INTERACTIVES

Grades   3 – 12  |  Student Interactive  |  Organizing & Summarizing

ReadWriteThink Notetaker

Useful for a wide variety of reading and writing activities, this outlining tool allows students to organize up to five levels of information.

 

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PRINTOUTS

• Writing Habits Journal Questions
  
  
• Writing Metaphor Assignment
  
  
• Writing Metaphor Rubric
  
  
• "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur

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PREPARATION

• Make copies of the Writing Habits Journal Questions, Writing Metaphor Assignment, and Writing Metaphor Rubric. If the poem is not available in your class text, either make an overhead or copies of "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur.
  
  
• Decide how to position this activity in your curriculum. Students may compose multimodal projects, polished papers, informal papers, or even journal entries. The Writing Metaphor Assignment lists a range of options for more formal projects. To narrow the focus, you might choose only a few of the options rather than giving out the entire list. Just keep in mind that the important goal is for students to discover more about themselves as writers and to share their discoveries with others in the classroom writing community.
  
  
• Review the Writing Habits Journal Questions, and decide whether to use the entire sheet or a shortened version. If you narrow the list, it's important for the full activity for students to consider questions 6, 9, and 10 at a minimum.
  
  
• Choose online interactives to match the options you have chosen for the Writing Metaphor Assignment. You might match the following tools to the pertinent activities on the list:
  
  
  • Acrostic Poems
    
    
  • Letter Generator
    
    
  • Plot Diagram
    
    
  • Literary Elements Map
    
    
  • ReadWriteThink Printing Press
    
  
  
• Be sure to test the student materials on your computers to familiarize yourself with the tools and ensure that you have the Flash plug-in installed. You can download the plug-in from the technical support page.

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