Slow Motion Writing Strategy

Writing standards require that students develop a topic with detail. Many of our struggling students find it difficult to expand their writing, describing in enough detail for the reader to picture the experience. The Slow Motion Writing Strategy we used this week helped students acquire a method for doing this with verbs.

I asked two students to act out the following sentence:

                                "The quarterback threw the ball."

As they did this, I used an iPad app called SloPro (free) to videotape them in action. We then watched the slow motion replay. As we watched, I pointed out the variety of actions taking place - grasping the ball, cocking his arm back, looking down field, turning his body, aiming, tossing the ball. Instead of one verb - threw - we identified at least six separate actions. Then we rewrote the original sentence into three sentences. We practiced this several times, watching a variety of actions in slow motion with  the SloPro app.

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Students then worked in pairs, choosing an envelope that contained a simple sentence, and acting it out in slow motion. After acting it out, they analyzed the actions and expanded the original sentence into two or more sentences. Several of these were videotaped with SloPro for the whole class to watch.

If you don't have an iPad, you can find lots of great slow motion videos on the internet. Here are a few that the students loved! Slow Motion Sneeze, Slow Motion Flying Cats, Slow Motion Water Balloon

Finally, students searched their journals for simple sentences that they could expand with more detail, especially focusing on breaking verbs down into multiple actions. 

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