In the Pocket

Continuing my work with my fifth grade tutor student, she tends to not only use run on sentences, but she repeats words several times in her writing. I thought to myself, "How can I help her to come up with other words?" So I decided to have her come up with other words instead of me just telling her what to write.

We began with some commonly overused words in writing: big, small, good, fun, happy, and the dreaded said. #SaidIsDead.
We've all read those papers where every time the student wants a character to talk it's "Bob said, then Jeff said, and Bob said" on and on and on and steady as she goes.

I began by cutting out different color construction papers into the shape of pockets, like pants pockets. I intended to use popsicle sticks to write our synonyms on but I couldn't find my popsicle sticks so what do teachers do? Improvise. I cut up the index cards I had on hand. Together we worked one word at a time to come up with synonyms. It actually ended up being pretty difficult at some points. For her coming up with synonyms, for me coming up with questions to prompt appropriate synonyms. Our end results were awesome! I hung our pockets on the wall and they are available for her to use when she is writing.

Next week we start the writing process so we may be able to use the pockets during revisions!