Kerri Hollowood

Strategy Demonstration Lesson

This lesson is for a group of fourth grade students. These students need assistance with
paragraph structure while writing. They are able to properly form sentences but struggle with
properly formulating a paragraph with thoughts that are related to each other.

Strategy (with Materials (include Content Focus Strategy Model

author(s) and text levels) Components
publication date) (marginal glossing)

Color-Coded • String Start by acting silly and Creating a risk free

• environment
Paragraph Beads pretending to drive a car.
Writing (Ewoldt • Tape Pretend to approach a
& Morgan, • Writers stoplight and ask students to
2017). notebook think of a stop light in their Declarative
• Knowledge
Highlighters heads and what the different
colors signal them to do.
Students should reply that
green means go, yellow
means slow down, and red
means to stop. This keeps
drivers safe on the road and
traffic flowing smoothly. As
Conditional
writers, we want to be sure Knowledge
that our writing also flows
smoothly, just like traffic!
We can also use the colors
of the stop light to be sure
that this happens when we
write! Green would mean
give it a go. It is the heart of Procedural
Knowledge
the paragraph or the topic
sentence. Yellow would
mean slow down and give
the supporting details or the
big ideas that support the
main idea. Red means stop
and tell more. Give more
information. Then, we
return to the topic of the
paragraph in the conclusion
with another green
sentence.
Strategy (with Materials (include Content Focus Strategy Model
author(s) and text levels) Components
publication date) (marginal glossing)

At this point, the teacher Modeling

will model an opinion
paragraph about whether
summer or winter is the
better season. Then, the
Guided practice
teacher will facilitate a
paragraph with the help of
students. Now we’re going
to string green, yellow, and
read beads on a string and
tape it into our writers
notebook so we can
remember the order of how
to write a paragraph during
our writing process. When Independent Practice
you’re done, you can move
the beads up and down the
string as you plan your
paragraph to be sure you’ve
included each part of the
paragraph. Then, use the Opportunity for
verbalization
colored highlighters to
color code your written
paragraph. Students will
come together as a class
and discuss their
experiences implementing
the strategy.