I am loving the Sentence Ladder but I am wondering how best to use the idea for first grade. Can some of you who went to the conference share more on using this in the lower grades? Will you introduce the whole thing or only first few steps of the ladder?

Did the word ladder come from that wonderful conference SOME of us did not have the opportunity to attend (mighty groan) My thinking is there are many of you who can help the rest of us with this-hum

I have another request, has anyone done a written version of QT using power pics with their students? I am thinking of making a pencil paper, very simple mind you, power pics test for an end of the year evaluation of my class. Any thoughts.

Annette

I think I heard Chris R say that lower grades might actually only use the first four rungs of the ladder.

Annette,

I attempted a written version of the QT and I wasn't happy with the way it worked. I haven't had a chance to play around with it again, since we are now on summer break.

If you figure out how to do it, will you please share? I'd love to try it again!


Thanks,

Tiffany
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

Scrapbunny...I'll give you the "quick" version here...the more in depth is on the download page, titled "WBT Model Classrooms". (Sorry if you have already gone there.) Anyway, you start the year off with it already up on the board. Each rung labeled and then put the sentences up there also. The goal is that you change the sentences each day. Now, there is no way that kids of any grade will be able to write the upper levels in the first few months of school, but we post them and discuss them to expose the kids to these higher level types of work.

As the year progresses, have them start writing them...they'll do fine because you have spent so much time with oral writing practice these first few months.

I'm no expert with the primary kids, but in talking with Andrea, Farrah, and Deb, (our Primary Experts) we have learned that this age group can most definitely get to Compound-Complex by the end of the year.

Wow, what a goal that could be, and then a party will be had when you meet that goal!

Best of luck...


Power to the Teacher!
Chris

Hey Scrapbunny...I just realized your from the great state of CA!

Do whatever you can to get to the conference in Phoenix on July 18-21...or any combo of those days. It'll be an incredible time to brush up on some materials that you know, but an awesome chance to learn some new things..."sentence ladder".

Just a thought,
Chris

Here is the poster I will be using in my Kindergarten classroom, I also made one for upper grades to share with my fellow teachers to use in their classrooms. I copied the ladder without the types of sentences to put in my calendar smart board file so that I will be able to model writing the different types of sentences everyday:)

Sorry the files did not upload...hopefully these will work.
Georgia

Thanks for the posters. I can't wait to start the sentence ladder with my groups next year (I teach reading K-5). The sentence ladder was one of my favorite things that I learned at the National Conference. I hope you get the opportunity to attend a conference soon. It is so amazing. It doesn't matter how many conferences I attend, there is always something new.

Susan floyd
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

I wanted to restate what Chris said~ we want to expose them to all the sentence types. Since the beginning stages of the sentence ladder are where the teacher is doing all the writing~ and modeling how the sentences become more complex, this is easy to do. Later they will "help me (the teacher)" and share their ideas to help construct the sentences. They will not be creating their own until much later. At that point you can differentiate the sentences that are created based on skill level. At first, you could create the first sentence and have your lower students come up with the next level (or two); then your on level to do the next (or two) and then your high students to try the highest levels. There is no telling where this will take our students for sentence writing. This year I am moving to first grade and I can't wait to see how far they go!!!!

I also wanted to add that Biff told us at the conference that we could have the students do a student ladder for step 5 of our 5~step lesson format. I tried this out with a lesson on a circle in my break~out session. It was awesome! I'm thinking that when I teach it this coming year, one of the variations I can use at the beginning is to do a sentence ladder on a concept I taught them the day before. I can't wait to see how it works!!!!