Grafted Writing with Eric Richards

First off, shout out to my Missouri boy Eric Richards.  We've met at previous NTPRS conferences, but this was my first time sitting in on one of his sessions.  This session was about writing strategies and I came in a little hesitant because I have been thinking of comparing two of my classes: one where we continue to do free writes once a week and the other where I hold off on writing until the end of second semester.  But after going to this session, I realized that this is actually way less about writing and more about getting kids to re-read...like Betsy's Blind Readings, where she has students do a blind re-tell, with others in the classroom helping him/her (while sneakily re-reading the story).

Anyway, here are the ideas I poached from Eric that I can't wait to try in the classroom:

1. Condensing content: Students read the text and write down five of the most important sentences in the text to re-tell the story by copying those 5 sentences verbatim (they cannot combine).  This is SUCH an important skill to teach kids and I love the idea of having kids copy so they are writing accurate language.  Once they have their 5 sentences, they compare with a partner and collaborate to agree upon their 5 sentences.  You can continue this compare/share activity until the class agrees upon 5 sentences.  During this activity, students are tricked into re-reading the text like 10 times!
2. What a difference a detail makes: students re-write the story word-for-word, changing one detail (character name, desire, etc).  Then, they read to a partner and share with the class.
3. Rotating desks: Every desk has a piece of paper, teacher projects a skeleton story and each person writes that sentence based on the story that is in front of them.  Then, they swap stories and read them to each other.  You can also extend this by having students add details to the story
4. The Space Between; This one is harder to explain...  Use a paper that is pre-numbered so that it works that, in partners, students co-create a story, leaving a sentence between what they write...so that students have to figure out what sentence goes between.  Eric has a template for this that I need to download and then upload here...  So, picture that student 1 writes sentence 1 and 3.  Student 2 writes sentence 2 and 5.  Student 1 writes sentence 4 and 7...make sense?
5. Addjectives: Students take a text and add an adjective to each sentence.
6. Publishing problems: Students have to insert a topic-travel, family, character description-into text as they re-write the story.  
7. Say what?: Just like number 6, but students add dialogue.
8. Paint a picture: Have a student illustrate a scene from the text and trade, partner writes text.
9. What in the world: Teacher orally describes a room and kids draw it and then have to write what happened in it.  For example, there is a knife near the bed, the window is open...
10. Please don't say vocab lists: Students must write a story using a list of vocab structures.  This works well if teachers pick the structures from an existing story because then, you can have students read the original text and compare.
11. Fill in the blank: Have students write missing pieces to a story (beginning, middle or end)
12. There are always 2 sides to a story: Re-write a story from the other character's point of view.
13. Write a picture: Add setting to a story.  Example: if the story simply says "The mom gave them hot chocolate," students can add details like "There was a fire burning in the living room..."
14. Old school texting: Basically just like passing notes in class, but you tell the kids they are texting as a particular character and they pass a paper back and forth.  

Sooooo many good ideas to help students scaffold their writing because, in the first activity, they are literally copying sentences from the text.