The activity began with her asking us to define topic sentence.
1. She gave us red, green, and yellow crayons and 4 index cards and told us to number them.
2. On the 1st card, we wrote, “Write a topic sentence.” on the front and on the back we drew a green circle and wrote, “Start.”
3. On the 2nd card, we wrote, “Write a detail about the topic sentence.” on the front, and on the back we drew a yellow circle and wrote, “Slow down.” so we’d remember to write details.
4. On the 3rd card, we wrote, “Stop, take a minute to reread and write more.” on one side, and on the other we drew a red circle and wrote, “Take a minute to look back at what you’ve written and write something more about the detail.” (Teachers will encourage the students to use the 5 W’s and how when writing details. )
5. On the 4th card, we wrote, “Remind the reader about the topic.” on the front, and on the back we drew a green circle and wrote, “Go back to green, your topic sentence.”
V. W. told us she asks students to make the cards so they can pull them out when they need to remember how to write a paragraph. She said she got the idea from Ruth Sheffield.
