Procedural writing: yum!

As you saw in an earlier post, we've been working on procedural writing lately. The other day, the students were tasked with writing a procedure to make a peanut butter sandwich (aka a recipe, of course!). They were unaware that once they were finished, I was going to take their recipes and attempt to make peanut butter sandwiches (using peanut-free soy nut butter, of course - we are in a school, after all!) using their recipes. As you can see from the pictures below, some of them weren't detailed enough, and if I'd never made a peanut butter sandwich before, and didn't previously know how, the results of following some of these recipes would have been (and were!) hilarious. It was a great example to the students of how, when you're writing a procedure for someone else to follow, you have to be sure to include a lot of detail and description (and some students did do a great job of that in their recipes).

Of course, after we all finished laughing, I made sandwiches for the class - having all of those supplies in front of them, and then NOT making sandwiches, would've have been downright cruel, right?!