User's Manual
258
NEO
User Manual
W RITE ON ! LESSONS FOR NEO
Write On! Lesson Categories and Teaching Supplements
. . . . .
Elementary School Exercises
This table gives you an overview of the categories and themes available at the
elementary school level. For detailed information about each writing exercise,
consult the ElementarySchoolSupplement.pdf teaching supplement file.
1_Elementary School
Seasons Fall The Fall folder contains calendar-related activities
with a fall theme. It focuses students’ observation
on how autumn changes affect animal and human
behavior. The activities contain inquiries into how
the season looks and feels, and how it affects us.
Files of important people’s birthdays and
interesting holidays are used to motivate writing.
Fall includes lots of writing for the seasonally-
inspired poet, letter writer, or storyteller.
Spring The Spring folder uses springtime as a theme to
spark writing activities. Each activity has a specific
focus on a topic and a skill. Two exercises provide
short descriptions of people and/or events as
models for high-interest paragraph writing. Other
activity files in Spring focus on an animal or plant,
custom, legend, or lyric as a takeoff for writing a
paragraph, a character sketch, a poem, a story, or
a news report.
Winter Wintertime is the theme for this folder’s writing
activities. While the broad theme is Winter, each
activity has a specific focus on a topic and a skill.
Two exercises provide short descriptions of people
and/or events as models for high-interest
paragraph writing. Other activity files for Winter
focus on an animal, plant, custom, or legend as a
takeoff for writing a character sketch, a poem, a
story, or a news report.
The Process
of Writing
Character
Building
The primary method of inquiry used in Character
Building exercises is critical thinking, expressed
through class or small-group discussion and/or
individual writing. While activities include the
writing of anecdote, personal experience, letter,
and verse, the emphasis is always on ideas, not
form.