Students will learn to distinguish between "facts" they know, sensory detail, and their imagination, and practice applying all three to their writing.
1. Lemon Writing-ask the students to get into groups of two students and hand out a lemon to each group.
2. Ask students to individually answer the following questions:
a. What are lemons used for?
b. What songs or stories you can think of that have been written about lemons or used lemons in the title?
c. Describe your group's lemon, without using "yellow" or "sour."
d. What does your lemon smell like?
e. What does your lemon feel like?
f. If you were a lemon, where would you have been born?
g. If you were a lemon, what experiences might you have had before arriving in this classroom?
h. If you were a lemon, how might those experiences shaped how you see yourself?
i. If you were a lemon, how did your experiences shape your characteristics, or vice versa?
3. Next, ask the students to share some of their answers with each other in groups and discuss possible answers they could have written down. Also ask students to cluster fact, sensory, and imaginative answers.
4. Ask students working in groups to name their lemon and continue to get to know their lemons, carefully noting the lemon's characteristics and determining what makes it different from other lemons they have seen. Then ask students to put their lemons in a big brown bag. After the lemons have been collected, ask each group to send up a representative to identify and retrieve its lemon.
5. Ask the students to explain how they knew the lemons belonged to their group. The goal here is to elicit the concept that although each lemon is similar to other lemons, each has markings and characteristics that make it an individual; despite these differences, they are all equally lemons. Discuss with the class the following questions:
a. How are your brothers and sisters like you, but different as well?
b. How are people in your school like you, but different as well?
c. How are people in your town like you, but different as well?
d. How are people in the United States like you, but different as well?
e. How are people in other countries like you, but different as well?
6. If there is still time, have each student write a one-paragraph biography of her lemon on the back of the lemon-brainstorming page.
Homework collected EVERYTHING!
Homework given: None
Handouts given out: Lemon Writing – Collected at the end of the period.
To read: Challenge everyone to spend a little time reading something that interests him over the Christmas break.
