Paragraphs Are Easy! Writing With Thinking Maps FLEX

**Please Note: This is a 4-week flexible schedule course, allowing your learner to watch the videos and practice the skills when it is convenient for you. There are no live meetings for this course, but I will ask students to record videos of themselves reading their paragraphs out loud and posting it in the message board for myself and others to listen to. 

*Flex Class Layout*
-Each Monday I will post 3 writing prompts in the message board and include an optional worksheet for each prompt. A video will be included for each writing prompt to walk students through the process. Encourage your child to have an item from home to represent what they want to write about. The amount of sentences depends on the level of writing each student is at. I will have different writing "goals" that students can strive for. 
-Learners will be asked to read their paragraphs out loud and post them on our message board. 
-Learners will also be asked to watch the videos that are posted in the classroom and provide encouragement through a comment or a video response.
-The teacher will also provided one-on-one feedback in the form of a video to each individual student and a message to each parent when a video is posted. 

*Class Interaction*
-Students can use flipgrid to record themselves reading their paragraph and listen to other students reading their paragraphs. This is a great platform for students to record  videos of themselves and provide feedback to each other. 

*Video Lessons*
In this course students will learn how to write a paragraph (4-12 sentences) using thinking maps. 
-They will think about the topic
-Then, they will create a thinking map. Thinking maps are a great way to help students organize their thoughts before they write a sentence. The teacher will model how to create the thinking map step-by-step. 
-Then, students will use their thinking maps to write sentences that will turn into a paragraph. 
-At the end of class students will edit their work by looking for: 
       -capital letters at the beginning of sentences
       -punctuation at the end of sentences
       -finger spaces 
       -Ask: is it neat? 

In each video I will walk learners through each step the process using interactive slides to keep their attention. The more we do it the easier it will become and the more sentences learners will be able to write. 

*Weekly Lessons*
Week 1: Opinion
Bubble Map 
-What is your favorite food?
- What is your favorite toy? 
-What is better? Playing inside or outside?

Week 2: Narrative 
Flow Map 
-Write a story about a time it was cold. 
- Write a story about the water. 
-Write a story about being in the mountains 

Week 3: Informational 
Bubble Map 
-Write about an important person. 
-Write information about an ocean animal.
- Write about an animal. 

Week 4: Review all 3
Bubble Map and Flow Map 
-What's better? A cat or a dog?
-Write a story about your best friend. 
- Write information about the sun or a planet.

If your child has a learning disability that makes it difficult to write they can use the 'talk to text' feature in google documents. Writing is really about organizing our thoughts and putting them into words. This can be written words or 'text' words. If your child is using this feature they might need parental assistance the first couple times they use it. Please reach out to me with any questions about this.