Teaching Tips
The Stack the Deck Writing Program
P.O. Box 5253
Chicago, IL 60680
Phone: 1-312-675-1000 and 1-800-253-5737
Fax: 1-312-765-0453
Email: stackthedeck@sbcglobal.net
Help a teacher do a job, and you win a friendis the rubric upon which The Stack the Deck Writing Program has been based. One of our goals with our web site is to provide writing teachers with practical strategies to make your job easier. Periodically, we intend to include teaching tips on this web link. Please share them with your colleagues.
Getting Started with Sentence Writing Skills –
combining, rearranging, subtracting, and expanding
Establishing a Writer's Vocabulary to Help with Revision
The heart of The Stack the Deck Writing Program is teaching four sentence manipulatory skills--combining, rearranging, subtracting, and expanding. Mastery of these skills will not only improve your students' syntactic fluency but also provide them with a writer's vocabulary that will aid them in revising a composition.
Before you begin the first sentence-combining exercise, we suggest that you ask your students, What is the fastest computer in the world? Some might respond IBM, or Macintosh, or Apple. Hopefully, someone will say the brain.
As soon as you hear the brain response, bring out a cauliflower or a cabbage or a grapefruit, and tell your students that they are actually looking at a brain. Better yet, don a brain thinking cap or bring out a brain jello mold and tell your students that the greatest computer in the world--their brain--automatically composed one sentence using special skills:
Write four sentences like these on the blackboard or overhead projector transparency:
There is a boy.
The boy is small.
There is a pond.
The boy fell.
Ask your students to make one sentence out of these four as quickly as possible--orally. Automatically, someone will probably say:
The small boy fell into the pond.
or
There is a small boy who fell into the pond.
Combining They combined four sentences into one.
Rearranging They rearranged words, putting smallbefore pond. Subtracting They subtracted unnecessary words. Expanding They expanded, adding intoor who.
These writer's vocabulary words become revision words as your students begin to rewrite a first draft.
Writer's Vocabulary Checklist Questions for RevisionCombining
1. Do I repeat the same dull openings, e.g., I, The, And then, etc.?
2. Which sentences can I combine to make them more interesting for my audience?
Rearranging
1. Which sentences can I rearrange to avoid repeating the same dull sentence beginnings?
2. Am I emphasizing key ideas by placing them in a position of importance--beginning or end of a sentence? If not, how can I rearrange the sentence?
Subtracting
1. Where did I pad my sentences by adding empty or dead words to fill up space?
2. Did I get off the topic? Where should I subtract unnecessary words or ideas?
Expanding
1. Where do I need to expand with journalistic questions--Who? What? When? Where? How? Why?--to support my main ideas?
2. Did I skip information my audience needs to know? Where should I expand?
Our Learning Off-the-Wall Classroom Posters serve as a constant reminder of our writer's vocabulary and can be used to reinforce key ideas taught in our textbooks.
Also, our most lauded teacher labor saving device, the SOS sheet, helps students apply the skills of combining and rearranging in revising a composition.
We do not market the brain thinking cap or brain jello mold. However, we know the company that sells them. If interested, Email us at stackthedeck@sbcglobal.net.
Bullen's Brilliance
Betsy Wagner, an 8th grade teacher at Bullen Middle School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, sent us an ingenious way of introducing our writer's vocabulary in Cut the Deck. Betsy's strategy follows along with some samples of her students' writing on this project. Unfortunately, we could not publish all the samples she sent us.
Dear Mr. Hrebic and all the folks at "Stack the Deck,"
I am an 8th grade English teacher at Bullen Accelerated Middle School in Kenosha. My students and I have had a lot of fun with the Cut the Deck-approach to learning English this year. I want to describe a section of writing that has successfully captivated even the most reluctant of writers in my classroom.
I have a deck of storytelling cards that I brought with me on my family's camping-vacation to Custer State Park in South Dakota. The cards are affiliated with the Goosebumps series, which my three children read daily, without fail. I used that deck of cards in my classroom to discuss "kernel ideas." (I have sent you a few examples of some of the cards that are from the Goosebumps game.) I explained to the students that we would turn over one card at a time and they were expected to come up with a sentence using the kernel idea on the card turned over. The second student in line, round-robin style, was instructed to repeat the sentence from the first card turned up and then I would flip over another card and the second student was to continue the storyline that was already started, but they would have to use either "glue words" or prepositions to incorporate the second kernel idea with the first sentence created by the first student in line. The third person in line, then added to the first two sentences with the third card's kernel idea revealed.
Each person had to repeat the entire story, using each example created by each student successively. I discussed using cues, or association each kernel idea with each individual's addition to the story when the students began to experience difficulty in remembering the story accurately. We continued until we failed to remember the story accurately. (I wrote down each sentence as they were created, just to check for accuracy and to help the students to remember.)
After playing the game a few times, the students began to see a strategy for making their peers work harder . . .they began to use lots and lots of juicy adjectives and adverbs! I pointed this fact out to the students and complimented their ability to use unusual adjectives.
By day two, I changed the game a little bit. I began the lesson by modeling five minutes of free writing on the overhead. I explained that when you free-write, that you need not worry about punctuation, capitalization, or sentence fragments. I wrote some really silly things to exemplify this point to them in my demonstration. Then the students took their turns free-writing for five minutes. (It was intense!) I associated free writing with warming up for a football or volley ball game, only we were warming up our creative minds! Psyched them up!
The next lesson, immediately following the free-writing, engaged the students in free-writing one or two sentences prompted by the Goosebumps cards that the students had become so fond of. Each person responded, on paper, to the same series of randomly flipped cards.
When they had twenty responses on their paper, I told them a story about how I managed to get through all of the research papers that I had to write in college. I told them that I took a creative writing course in which I learned how to organize a paper. In college, I printed out abstracts of scholarly sources and cut them up into kernel ideas. All sources with the same, or connected ideas, I put into one pile, and then arranged the rest of the abstracts according to categories, or subject matter. This is when I pointed out the poster on my wall (by the way, thanks for the posters!) that had four words on it: combine, rearrange, subtract and expand. The students immediately were convinced, by use of this process, and the logic behind the four processes on that poster, that they would be able to write too! So I gave them all scissors and tape and had them cut up their kernel ideas, arrange them on their desks according to subject matter, come up with a few transitional sentences, an introduction, a conclusion, and some supporting ideas and details to create a story, using as many kernel ideas from the Goosebumps cards turned over, as possible.
Once the sloppy copy was written, I took out an SOS and had them evaluate the first four words of each sentence, and list the glue words and/or the prepositions used in each sentence. From the use of the SOS sheet, the students were impressed with their ability to use a variety of sentence-beginnings. (They were beginning to believe in their ability to write).
The students then exchanged their papers with their neighbor and did peer-editing. Once suggestions were made, the final copies could be written. I am sending you some examples of their work. I hope some of it might make your web site.
I am looking forward to your next visit in the spring. See you all then!
Sincerely,
Betsy Wagner
Bullen Student Samples
The Arrival
by Charlie BakerIt was midnight atop the frigid, lifeless hill from which nothing but evil escaped. Bats flapped away as a looming owl gazed upon the dimly lit courtyard, while perched on top of a moss-covered gargoyle. The jet-black hearse rolled up the drive over the dank gravel. The door creaked open. Thrust outwards from the vehicle was a massive, army regulation combat boot attached to an even greater leg.
What emerged from the vehicle was a beast of a man. Due to a heavy brow, his face was engrossed in an inky shadow. His colossal appendages were affixed to a monstrously immense chest and pelvis.
The juggernaut closed the door and turned towards the tail end of the six-stride-long coach. Covering the distance in only three steps, he gripped the tailgate latch and pulled it open revealing an elongated box.
The box was carried to the house and the savage brute thrashed his mallet-like fist on the door. Muffled screams and outcries emanated from within the house. He thrust the door inwards and stood in the doorframe almost completely consumed in shadow. The inhabitants of the house stared in awe at the horrid monster. Everything was frozen and dead silent except the celebration music. He stumbled in clumsily, crouched down from the height of the ceiling, and presented the box to the birthday boy. Still no one moved. Eventually the boy reluctantly accepted the proffered box. Standing up, the ogre glared at the everyone at the party. He slowly removed his mask revealing his true identity.
"U-u-uncle Tom." The boy stuttered.
"Happy birthday, Billy!" exclaimed the now more normal looking man. Everyone, now relieved, started to murmur and eventually began talking again.
"Well this has been an interesting encounter, eh, everyone?" Tom asked.
Everyone replied at the same time.
"It sure has. Okay, then, let's party."
So everyone did just that and had a ball.
Figment
by KellyThere once was a big glassed dork. He lived in a smelly, gross castle with flapping bats. He also lived with yucky spiders, and their webs, and gross rats. They wore creepy masks. Late at night the scary dork would chime midnight. Just then a rolling skateboard with a hooting, howling owl on it flew past a bunch of clanging, metal chains. Out of the blue came a moaning, slow, annoying scream from the slimy, squirmy worms, as the noisy storm blinked the lights.
If you think this is real, guess again. This is just a Figment of the big glassed dorks imagination. He's actually blowing out the candles on his yummy, chocolate cake, with his "normal" family. Or is he?
When the Night Comes
by Katey SchrandtSkateboarding home from work, I see the geek. He looks at me through taped glasses and points to the setting sun. The day's almost done. I look to the north, a storm is abrew. A guy in a mask tries to scare me. "Boo!" He holds out to me a cake which is filled with worms. I scream as I think how many germs it may have.
Off in the distance, I hear a wolf howl. I ride past a house with spiders crawling up a wall. The moaning grows louder as I hear a clock chime. It's already midnight, the time of the dead.
I feel an owl swoop down on my head. I hear some chains, but I don't follow the sound. I know much better, to stay on my ground. I smell something putrid, and I find some rats. The bats find me off-guard and fly over my head. Their screeching is loud enough to wake the dead. I skate as fast as I can.
At the corner, the geek is there. "When the night comes, when the night comes, beware, beware."
As I skateboard away, I wonder if I will be alive the next day, because when the night comes, the night comes. It's the death of a day . . .will I be alive to say, "It's the birth of a day?" All I can do is worry, when the night comes, when the night comes.
Midnight
by Jessica GaudioAt midnight when the clock struck twelve, the red-haired geek with glasses ran outside wearing an ugly, hideous mask. He zoomed down the road on his skateboard getting caught in many spider webs, while he tried to scare the young trick-or-treaters.
As a loud crash of thunder from the brewing storm broke out, the geek ran towards an old shack to get out of the rain. After jumping off his skateboard, the geek ran up to the gate, which was locked with large, metal chains. Because he heard a faint sound of a wolf howling and the hoot of an owl in the cold, autumn air, he became even more frightened.
Suddenly the gate swung open. He ran up the hill toward the "haunted" shack. Walking in, he saw a cake with 472 candles. Since there was a birthday cake whoever or whatever lived here must be celebrating its birthday. Wondering why there were 472 candles, a horrible smell filled the air. The cellar door flew open and an old, raggedy witch-like woman came out looking as though she was awoken from the dead. She asked in her scratchy voice why the geek liked scaring the little trick-or-treaters and if he didn't stop he'd pay. Too scared to answe, he ran out the door and never scared another trick-or-treater.
Surprisingly, the "witch" was really a mother of one of the kids the geek scared. She was paying him back for all the Halloweens that the geek scared the children.
These Bullen Middle School students also sent us outstanding samples of their wriitng: Nick Ewald, Andy Thorson, Becky Rutkowski, David Dahl, Monica Miller, Joshua Smith, and Mary jo Jerez. Congratulations!
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