CL04 homework paragraph writing

As we know, the students need to write a short paragraph in the workbook. It's difficult for them to do it independantly at very beginning. Ashley, a full time TA, in Yinzhou, prepared a paragraph with few blanks for them each unit. The students only needs to fill in the blanks with key words. Here's an example:
My mother _______________ in the kitchen(在厨房干什么). My father is _________________in the living room（在客厅里做什么）. I ___________________in the __________(我在。。。。地方正干什么)。Ashley usually has dinner in the bedroom, I usually_____________in the computer room,and my mother usually ____________________in the canteen.
it can give students some ideas when they are writing. As they move on, they will be more open to ideas. I like her idea. She worked very hard on it and she did a great job!
Are there any more ideas?

This is very good Tracey.

Here are a few other ideas for learning to work with paragraphs:

. students must answer simple questions from a paragraph they read. You let everyone read, then take away the paragraph and give them 5 questions to write answers for. Put the students in pairs and tell each pair to write ONE answer. After a few minutes each pair can tell the class the answer they wrote for their question.

. making lists - give students a simple paragraph and they must make a list of sentences from the paragraph.

. turning lists into paragraphs - **excellent way to start writing paragraphs. You give students a list of sentences (with a central thought involved) and students must re-write the sentences into a paragraph.

. creating lists on a central thought - present a central idea: lunch, and students must write 3 - 5 sentences about the idea. Ie: I eat KFC on Mondays. I like meat for lunch. I always drink water with lunch. *The list can then be turned into a paragraph for homework.

In teaching writing it is essential us to have students to see examples of good writing. It's something that takes time for the teachers and maybe the TAs, but writing good example paragraphs is super important. How can students know what a paragraph is suppose to be without seeing and reading them? Ideally there should be time in every second lesson of a unit for students to write and to read good writing. Paragraphs should also be used as warmers/review for speaking tasks or presentation type of speaking. Choose a few students a week to read their writing. When they progress, it will be good for students to begin to correct bad paragraphs. There are some Mad lib paragraph worksheets and correction paragraphs in dropbox under CL04.


My favorite subject is ______________. I love ___________, but I don’t like

_________. My friend’s name is __________. (He/She) likes _______________, but

(he/she) hates ________________. We both love ________________.