RPI: Writing Like An Author

 As part of our RPI Homework, we were asked to lead students through the "Great Beginnings" activity. I decided to use the same text as we used in our RPI session to offer a high ceiling for this activity and made a few adjustments to make it more Year 4 friendly. 

First, I introduced the word "Imitate." We had a great 5 minute discussion as a think pair share, after discussing what it means to imitate, where students discussed whether or not it is a good thing to imitate others. We then jumped up and did a GoNoodle dance video "Boom Chicka Boom." After we discussed that it was a good reason to imitate. The next thing we did was watch a video about an artist who imitated vanGogh's paintings and ended up learning some amazing things about their own painting style. 

A few great connecting points that she made in the video (and that I put on the whitebaord) were:

"You find new ways to bring energy and expression to your own work."

"....to discover your own voice and style."

"...a way to evoke emotion and find your own voice."

Then, I read the text selection aloud before flipping to the next slide where I outlined the vocabulary words that I wanted to unpack with the class (as seen on the slides below). 

Students were then paired up with a buddy to work on the "Writing Like an Author" task. I took the sections that the students needed to expand on and colour coded them to the text selection on the next slide to help them to understand what they needed to write and where it needed to be inputted into the text.