After we do five ‘thought rounds,’ I’ll ask you to read your thoughts aloud. Write your thought in one sentence or more. If nothing comes to mind right away, shake a thought loose by searching your mind with your inner eye, or by making something up. Each time I repeat the saying, write a thought. Your thoughts can be about something real or imagined. I told my students, “When I say ‘a penny for your thoughts,’ please pick up your pencils and write a thought. Your thoughts were deemed valuable when a person offered money to get at what was on your mind. I explained that it might sound “cheap” to offer so little for someone’s thoughts, but a penny was worth a lot more when the saying originated. We agreed that you say the phrase to a person who seems distracted or deep in thought-maybe anxious-when you want him to express what he is thinking at that moment. I wrote the saying on the board and asked students if they had ever heard of it, knew the meaning, and could tell me how it was used. Triggering students’ thoughts using the saying “a penny for your thoughts” I used the “penny for your thoughts” lesson to help them see that, in fact, they have an infinite number of thoughts in a week. The highest total from any child was fewer than a hundred thoughts. My fifth-grade students in Brooklyn defined thinking as creating thoughts or ideas in the mind, and said that an idea can be a “mind-picture.” Their responses to the third question were revealing. How many thoughts do you have in a week?.Before we start writing, let’s consider a few questions: I want you to take those thoughts out of your heads and change them into words on paper. Your thoughts are ingredients that create writing ideas. I started the lesson by telling students: What happens inside your head will be the spark to motivate you as a writer. My students enjoyed sharing thoughts that told stories of their lives and, in the process, learned to think of these stories as material for their writing-all for just a penny. Once students have begun to articulate their thoughts, follow-up class discussions can allow them to cross-fertilize these thoughts and experiences with those of their classmates, sparking new ideas and helping students who say they can’t think of anything to write. This “penny for your thoughts” exercise is a fun and engaging way to get students thinking about what goes through their minds. Those thoughts in turn can become the starting point for creative writing responses and provide students with the motivation for seeing them through. Every writing teacher at some point will hear the common student lament, “I don’t have any ideas!” Focusing on meta-cognition-or thinking about thinking-can help educators to engage even young students in the complex process of articulating their thoughts. One of my goals, when I teach writing, is to help my students to become more aware of their thoughts so they realize that writers’ ideas are not magical things that fall out of the sky. When I saw my coin jar overflowing with pennies, it called to mind the saying “a penny for your thoughts,” and gave me an idea for a lesson plan: Take one thought and open up a child’s world. Pennies from the Heavens of Mind and Imagination. .2–5.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.(Refer to the English Language Arts Standards > Writing > Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4, and Grade 5) Genre(s) taught: Short fiction, narrative
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