Watch Out For The Flying Shoe!

Today was my infamous flying shoe lesson.  I came up with this lesson on the fly during my first year of teaching.  I was reading my students writing and I was frustrated with the disconnect from their ability to tell fascinating stories and their writing which wasn't using that detail that I knew they had in their minds.  We had just done a professional development on the five writing details that we ask kids to bring out in their personal narrative writing.  Those details are:

• Setting
• Dialogue
• Physical Description
• Character Action
• Internal Thinking

The professional development centered around using the word "as."  I call this the magical word "as."  We learned how powerful it was for kids to learn to write a line of dialogue followed by the word "as" and then a sentence containing character action.  I tried teaching it and the sentences were a bit more interesting, but still lacked some flair.  That is when I decided to get them on the carpet and just tell them to watch and write the sentence in this format that describes what happened.  I proceeded to take off my shoe and yell "Oh No! A spider!" while tossing my shoe into an empty area in the room.  The kids were shocked and then laughed and magically they dove into their journals and came up with amazing sentences.  

"Oh No, A spider," Mr. Montgomery yelled as he tossed his shoe through the air.

"Oh No! A spider!" Mr. Montgomery exclaimed as his shoe went flying across the room.

"What is he doing," thought Mr. Montgomery's class as they watched him throw his shoe.

Every year after that I have made this lesson a staple and made it a bit more dramatic.  Kids remember the flying shoe and their writing has benefited from it, because something that silly gives them a kind of permission to look at their own life and bring excitement and humor to their writing.  I heard great sentences yesterday and I look forward to reading some great improvements in their writing.

I continue to encourage them to love their writing and be proud of what they can bring to life in their journals.  I am a big believer in the fact that the most important thing I can do in second grade is to convince each student to love their writing.  I am excited to see what writing will bring us next!