Funny Truth, Showing & Not Telling & Freebie to Help

One of the rewards students can earn in the room is choose to lead the class in brain breaks. One of my sweeties picked it and did it yesterday. She did a wonderful job but of course the odds are the rest of the class will get a little crazy. As the class was starting to get louder and crazy not really following the directions of the break, the sweetie turned to me and said "So this is what it is like to be a teacher." I couldn't hide my laughter because she nailed it.

I know showing and not telling is not an easy concept to teach or for students to understand especially when it comes to them applying it to their writing. We have been working on it for the last couple of weeks. This week we are wrapping up our current writing unit and I needed something for some of my quick finishers to do. So I came up with making another helpful class book.

This time it is the WOW Words (aka words & phrases to help us show & not tell). It is perfect for them and bonus they are creating a resource for the entire class. They get to be the teachers!
Each page starts with one of those tired, overused words then students work to add other words and phrases that are more interesting to use in our writing in place of that word.

Here is an example... I wish I had my camera today, but these are some of the ideas one of my groups came up with.

So far our book has grown in pages and ideas. Students decided crazy was a boring word so we are coming up with new ways for that. 

Grab your free copy at my store! Oh, and Go Detroit Tigers!!