The focus of my sixth grade classes is narrative writing: short stories about the student’s own lives. To help with the structure of writing a short story, we explained a hamburger model of writing–the buns are the topic and concluding sentences, the meat is the essential components of the story, and the condiments are the supporting details, evidence, and sensory details!
Sixth grade is my coach teaching periods. To introduce our students to this idea, me and my co-teacher showed the students this Hamburger Model from ClassTools.Net. This is an awesome resource, especially for writing, because it helps students plan their paragraphs and how the topic is introduced, supported, and concluded.
Here’s what the blank model looks like:
Students can type or copy and paste directly into the model, then save a copy of their own! Super easy!
For the first few days, we helped the students copy some of their ideas to the diagram or to add some new support. Today I shared a simple narrative story from my personal life, and drew a diagram around my story to give my students a visual!
After reading my story, I went over my topic sentence, supporting details, and conclusion. I even talked through ideas and details such as my ‘silver, sparkling heels’ rather than ‘shoes’ or the fact that I described my friend. However, I also had the students give me some suggestions. Where could I improve? One student said I could have described my dog. I asked them what they knew about my friend. Did they know she had red hair? They shook their heads–another example of a place to add information and detail! I think this was helpful for my students to visualize and talk through! They will continue editing this week, as well as peer-edit with students from Charles City! Exciting stuff!