Peppler’s Classroom Blog

After DOL, etc., we reviewed the vocab words for Unit Two.  We had already identified the roots for the unit, and I announced the due dates yesterday (see Tuesday’s post).

Today, we spent some time practicing some real brainstorming.  Students will be writing a description which incorporates a place, a person and an object.  This will give us an opportunity to focus on ideas and organization as well as a chance to ‘play’ with words and word choice in writing.

As part of the prewriting, I stressed that true brainstorming has to “unfiltered”, that we can’t make judgments as we go or worry about the quality of each item that we list.  Students practiced some unfiltered brainstorming before I taught them the technique of hitchhiking.

For students who run out of ideas quickly when they brainstorm, hitchhiking can be quite helpful.  You take the first item on your original list and think of other items that are associated with it or are of the same kind.  I did this as an example in class (hitchhiking-example.pdf), which might help you see it better.

Their only homework is to continue with the hitchhiking on their list until they’ve “hitched” off each of the original items.  We’ll be using this list of possibilities tomorrow in class.