Learning About Procedural Writing

This week Ms. Jongerden has been showing us what procedural writing is all about when we write the instructions. We have dabbled with writing instructions after carving a pumpkin and building a gingerbread house with our learning buddies earlier this year, but we are focusing on what it needs to include to be ‘just right’. We have also been following instructions all the time to learn how to do things! So now it is time to write instructions about what we know how to do to teach someone else. 

We have learned that when we write instructions, it must include certain things and came up with this chart to help us:

Yesterday, we wrote a procedure titled 'How to Make Popcorn'. Oh was this an exciting, surprise activity that had students literally jumping around! 

We came up with a title, introduction and had the steps provided to us BUT we found that the steps provided maybe had some room for improvement. We learned sometimes we might need to go back and revise the steps to make sure they are really clear and make sense! Otherwise, we were waiting and waiting for the popcorn to pop but there was no instruction to tell us to 'turn on the popcorn machine'. That certainly makes it tricky to pop popcorn! So much anticipation. We also learned that it didn't tell us how much butter and salt to add so we thought overall, next time we could add more for our own preferences. 

What shall we write about next? The students thought we should learn how to make cupcakes, cookies or cake! That sounds exciting too! Good luck to families with all the new cooks in the house!