I just posted about modeling the Genius Ladder in Third Grade. Check it out!

debweigel-joyfulone.blogspot.com/

I will be in Fifth Grade teaching Science this week- Woo Hoo! The adventure continues!

Deb

Deb ... great work as always! I especially like that you are using the Oral Writing gestures as kids do the Genius Ladder. If teachers use both Oral Writing and the Genius Ladder daily, students will be speaking, at minimum, 30 complete sentences a day ... so, in four weeks, that would be 600 complete sentences! In 9 months, that would be 5,400 sentences! ... not counting 10 minute writing and The Writing Game. Oh, how we love reps in WBT!

I had tried this a week or two ago and it kinda flopped.( because I did not really do it right ) But last night I re watched the live stream broadcast and gave it another go to. Today we worked on conjunctions to lead to compound sentences tomorrow. Well what do you know the kids did great and really liked it. I do believe I will do this every morning in our grammar/ writing time. I have decided to kinda abandon the reading streets suggested writing for a bit and get these fourth graders working on oral sentences so then when we put it to paper they are better quality. Thanks for the example very helpful.
Deb- I would love to hear about what you do for science the WBT way. Struggling throug a text right now. Trying to figure something out but only so much time in the day. Wish I had more.

Awesome Genius ladder, Deb! Thank you for sharing. I like seeing how you labeled everything, I need to work on that.



Tiffany
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

Tiffany, I agree - I too need to label like Deb's excellent example I am going to switch my white board so i can do more of this and I am going to try if the school won't block show her example to my students we love to try and keep up with other classes.
Annette.

Oohhh, Annette,

I didn't think of showing my kiddos. We love to "keep up" with other classes, too. I'll do this tomorrow.

Tiffany
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

I am having some difficulty with the genius ladder! I have tried it a few times, watched the broadcast, printed the materials, and I am STILL frustrated! I start with the blah sentence and label (article, noun, verb), the students change the nown..perfect! I get confused when we move to the spicy sentence. My students have not yet learned about adjectives. I'm thinking I need to do a lesson on adjectives. However, we're not even close to that lesson in our grammar book. Any suggestions? I teach second grade and my class is mostly ELL students.

Karen

How can I use the gnesis ladder in grade one?

Karen,

I would take the time to do a mini lesson on adjectives now. With 2nd graders, you can teach them the power pix for adjective using the 5-step lesson plan on the power pix file. Once they have a gesture and some basic knowledge, you can continue to build on it every time you write a spicy sentence.

I teach 5th grade and my class is 95% EL's, to make sure they didn't forget what an adjective is I wrote this on my white borad "Adjective- describes a noun." Also, before we write a spicy sentence I always ask "What is an adjective" to which they all reply "An adjective describes a noun" (with gestures).

The other thing I would suggest is practice, practice, practice. It sounds like they already know how to replace the noun in the blah sentences. How about writing a blah sentence (ie: The dog sat.) then add the spicy sentence like this The ________ dog sat. (label the blank adjective) and have them talk with their partner about all the adjectives they can think of (the sillier the better) to describe the dog. This will get them thinking about the process.

Let us know how it goes!

Tiffany
WBT Intern, 2011-2012

Jag, I teach first grade and we have begun the genius ladder. We are still doing it as a team building 5 step lesson. We have an example on the wall ( to cute see my old pictures in the forum). The one we build is on my white board. We talk and gesture "blah" and do the gesture. Then we work on adjective and verb review the power pics and then build sentence.
Now it is spicy. We fan our lips and then give them the chef kiss.
Here is what we did yesterday: The dog
The fast skinny dog
Then we tried to do an adder
The fast skinny dog really ran because he was in the street.

Now, chime in y'all if i did it wrong! We are working on oral sentences still and my babies and ELl are catching on. This also takes a lot of teach- OK time. Did this help. Please help me out you wbt's if i am way off.
Annette

That totally helps! I will try that!

Annette,
You are on a good start with the Genius ladder, but your blah sentence needs a verb, or it isn't really a sentence.
"The dog" could be "The dog sat." or "The dog ran."
Let me know how it works!
Deb