Uses for OWATs

OWATs - or One Word at a Time stories - are the brainchild of Bob Patrick. Essentially, their purpose is to allow students to be creative and write their own stories within the confines of vocabulary that you want them to use. One vocab word is passed out to each group, and they have to write a sentence with that word. Bob then has them switch cards with another finished group so they can write their next sentence, continuing the story.

I found that if I waited for enough groups to be done for that, the chances that a group would be sitting around doing nothing - because either (a) no other group was done soon enough or (b) the group that was done had a word the other group had already gotten - was much higher.




I also found that in my smaller classes, if I only had as many words as the number of groups, I was very limited on the number of words I could ask them to use. So I made a couple modifications.

Instead, I put all the cards on a table at the front of the room, and each group got and returned cards at their own pace. I like that they all get the same words, but in a totally different order, and that it results in completely different stories.

So now I have seven stories per class - what do I do with them? Here are a few things I've done. I love this because the kids get exactly the repetitive input I want them to, but we're using their work as our class text.

Story Time
I choose seven students who Want More, and I put them in charge of a group. The rest of the kids I divide into small groups of two or three and assign them to a dux. Each dux gets the typed copy of a story from the day before, with questions or an assignment included. They read the story, like story time, to their group, who listens and asks questions. The dux will ask any questions that go along with the story, or give them the small assignment. (write an ending. draw a picture for every paragraph. give each section a title. if you were x character, what would you have done in x situation? etc.) The groups discuss and write their answers/assignments on a sheet of paper they're carrying around. When groups are winding down, I ring the bell, and they proceed to the next dux.

Stations
I set up stations around the room with various activities:
-a textivate station for one of the stories, with various reading activities
-Jenga station, with questions and instructions for playing Jenga
-make a movie trailer for this station, with a video camera or your phone
-an iPad with several apps available for making cartoons out of a story (we particularly like Explain Everything)
-a listening station with a QR code - they listen to the first half of a sentence and then select the second half of a sentence from a sheet on that table
-make the story out of play-do, and then use the pieces to 'act' the story and narrate a summary to me
-put a summary of the story in order
-write the hit song described in this text, but you can only use words and phrases already in the text (although you can use different forms of those words)

Gallery Walk
Hang up sections from the stories and have kids interact with them in various ways - draw pictures, make comments, annotate, write questions.

FVR
Put these in silent reading folders, and let the kids select them to read when we do FVR in class.