Showing posts with label Scholastic News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scholastic News. Show all posts

Monday, March 3, 2008

Hot Spot


Today we are focusing on the HOT SPOT of an article. This idea was adapted from Ralph Fletcher's Writing Workshop, the Essential Guide. Fletcher talks about identifying the HOT SPOT of a story as a writer. We looked at using this same skill as a reader.

We used our Scholastic News, and tried to find one or two sentences in each article that contained the gist of the article. Usually these included at least two W's. This
HOT SPOT is the key to comprehending the article. We also discussed the importance of slowing down and thinking about this part of an article, because this is the most important section.

Students skimmed each of five articles, and then highlighted what they felt was the section that contained the key. Then, we used the doc camera to project articles and discussed the differing opinions, until we decided on the
HOT SPOT for each article.