This year my students are having a VERY hard time organizing their writing.  Most students are familiar with story structure when writing a fiction or realistic fiction story.  However, when students write to persuade or inform, they have no idea how to organize their writing.  Often it turns into a long and boring list of facts.
We are using the “stoplight” writing method that will hopefully transform into multi-paragraph essays later. We will see.
I made this poster for students to see.  Then I have modeled writing paragraphs using a green marker, orange marker (yellow is too hard to see), and then ended with a red marker.  As I wrote the paragraph, I thought aloud crafting a hook and including appropriate transitions.
Next I will give students this paper with the stop lights as a reminder to include all the parts.  I can’t decide if I will print the paper on the color printer (most likely not- too expensive).  I will probably have the students color in the stoplights with marker to show what part of the paragraph they are writing.  Does that make sense?
If it works (fingers crossed), I will post some student work samples!
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