Genius Ladder

All I have to say is WOW! Watching Chris Biffle does it again! This time with sentences. He begins with a blah sentence and teach students how change this blah sentence into a topic sentence then finally a paragraph! Every time I watch a WBT video I am left with a sense of urgency to try something new.

This video show students how to begin with a basic sentence including a noun and a verb. He shows students how to change the noun and then the verb in this so called 'blah' sentence. Students taught each other new ways to change the nouns and verbs and each new sentence deserves a 10 finger woo! The next level (the spicy sentence) of the ladder adds in an adjective to describe the noun. Then students teach new modifiers for this new sentence. Once again 10 finger woos around for successful sentences. As this progresses Coach B slowly adds in what a noun, a verbs, and an adjective is using whole brain gestures! He continues this by adding in 2 adjectives and so on so the students make sentences that make sense.
Now for extender sentence... Oh fun! Now we use the spicy sentence and he shows students how to add more to the sentence by adding new words and phrases. Now this is where it gets fun! Watching these students extend their sentences makes me laugh and the students get all sorts of excited when hearing these sentences. With the favorite line 'make it new' Coach B adds a level of challenge to not use any of the same words used before!
Hold your hats as we continue to more to the last level-the genius level. Topic sentences are introduced now so students are able to see how to write a controlled paragraph. He challenges students to create 4 genius sentences building upon the topic sentence!! LOVE IT!
Don't forget the 3 rules: don't start a sentence with and, don't start a sentence with because, if you have 2 sentences next to each other they can't start with the same word. 10 finger woos all around!! Yay for another inspirational video and my next addition to the classroom!