I understand the idea of the Genius Ladder, but how far "up the rungs" should we go in 3rd grade? How is it introduced exactly? Do I have to go through the steps of the writing process before going into the Genius Ladder? I can't find exact information on this.

Start by having your students answer a question in a complete sentence. I would do this following my lesson on "what is a sentence?" For example, "what did you do this summer?". They should restate the question in the answer. "this summer I read a book." Next, encourage an adder using and. Then I would teach spicy sentence. "This summer I read a long book and swam in a huge lake! The order of the above really depends upon how you are teaching according to your curriculum. Spicy sentences would come as you teach adjectives. How far up the rung you go most likely depends on your class and well they are getting it. I hope this helps. The best explanation on it that I know of is in The Model Classroom Ebooks. Also, try playing the sentence writing game. Let me know if you have any more questions. I just learned about he ilia ladder in Arizona. I haven't had the opportunity to use it yet with my kiddos. I don't start until the 24th with them. Keep us posted as to how it goes. Good luck!

Rebecca Crooks
WBT Intern
2011-12

The Genius Ladder is, essentially, a scaffolded structure to teach students sentence and then paragraph construction. The bottom rung should be the simplest kind of complete sentence your kids could write ... we'll call it the Blah rung. There are two ways to construct the Blah rung ... use a question like rcrooks suggests with the simplest possible answer or an article-subject noun-verb construction. The boy walks. A cat scratches. The apple shines.

The second rung should be Spicy ... add an adjective. When you teach this level, give students a sample adjective then ask them to work in pairs to tell each other as many possible adjective alternatives as possible.

The third rung we are currently calling Extender Complexor ... using the word Complexor to fit in with the Writing Game. An Extender Complexor is anything that extends the Spicy sentence ... a prepositional phrase, a conjunction, an adverbial phrase, an appositive ... you can be as specific or general as you wish on what you want kids to use at the Extender Complexor Level ... but again, give a sample and then have your students work in pairs to orally create as many Extender Complexor alternatives as possible.

The fourth rung is the Genius Paragraph. Students take one of the Extender Complexor sentences as their topic sentence and add as many Adders as possible ... detail sentences. At this point, they should be writing.

Obviously, you can vary the Genius Ladder however you wish ... but the key idea is to move from simple sentences to complex, give kids lots of oral reps at the lower level and finish with paragraph writing ...

The above description is, I think, a considerable improvement over what we have in the current edition of "Designing your Whole Bain Teaching Model Classroom" ... we'll post an update of that document soon.

Mr. Biffle, would you add each of the Power Pix, let's say first grade, that show:
Noun
Adjective
Verb etc. as you introduce each rung of the genius ladder?

Annette
PS I like the "blah" sentence

That helps a lot! Thank you so much!