When I first started teaching I hated "how to" writing with a passion. It seemed to be an endless cycle of me saying "What do you know how to do?" and them saying "Make cupcakes" or any other random thing and me saying "tell me how" and them having no clue how to do it! Or 5000 people writing about how to make cereal or a PBJ. I thought I would lose my mind!! Then I started reading about Experiential Learning and I decided to overhaul the way I teach how to writing.
I'm also big on making memories, and my kids are always hungry so decided to kill two birds with one stone. Now my how to unit doubles as a cooking school. I picked four easy snacks that kids can make on their own and we make them! I follow the I do, we do, you do together, you do alone progression. Some people skip the you do together, but my low babies need that extra scaffold.
The next day is a "we do" we make the snack and write piece called Funny Face Pancakes together in a share the pen activity. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/extending-interactive-writing-grades-2-5
The following day I model making Ladybugs on a Log, and they create it and write the how to in teams. The next day I model making Peanut Butter Smiles and they make and write about it alone. As they work each day they take pictures of their process in case they want to use it for a published piece.
Once they have conquered that they find a picture online of a snack they would like to make, and study it to figure out what they would need to make it, and what steps they would need to take. Then they create a how to for that snack, and I pick the best one for the class to make!
