Ruby Bridges: Partner writing activity

Last week, we learned all about Ruby Bridges.  On Monday and Tuesday, the boys and girls completed a partner-writing task. They worked with their elbow partner to respond to the question:  
How does Ruby Bridges show that she is a brave person? Use evidence from the text and your own ideas.  

We call this question an "RRWEP" because it's a reading response with evidence plus question. The "plus" part means students are to add their own information such as plusses or comments.  

The chart below shows the success-checklist for the task and as you can see by the photos, students worked really hard to do their very best.  

TIGGTY stands for: Today I'm going to tell you and NYKMA
stands for: Now you know more about. These are our
opening and closing sentences for our longer responses.

On Tuesday, we set up a kind of gallery, where students could roam the room and read one another's responses. Overall, this was a very effective activity. Not only did students get to practice and share their outstanding writing skills, but they also used all kinds of interpersonal skills that helped them work together on a challenge. I enjoyed listening in on their conversations about all the different ways this extraordinary child showed courage and bravery.