Smoothie Time! - An Introduction to Procedural Writing

Writing that explains or tells us how to do something (called procedural writing) is very important in our day-to-day lives. As we all know, there is nothing more frustrating than directions that are unclear or badly written. 

Our smoothie activity will help children understand what procedural writing is and how to read it. It also lets them write their own instructions clearly so that others can follow them. This also demonstrates real-life uses for this kind of writing and shows why it is so important.

Part one of the activity was today. I showed the children a lot of different kinds of cookbooks and explained that a goal could be to come up with many different smoothie recipes and make our own cookbook. Olivia explained that it is important to write down ingredients and the directions in case you want to make it again - you can't always remember everything.

We put our food in categories - fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Each table selected from our wealth of farm ingredients - local frozen berries, peaches, spinach, bananas, carrots, tomatoes, basil, apples, and others. After adding all the ingredients they thought would taste good together, we turned on the smoothie machine and enjoyed the outcome. Groups shared their concoctions with other groups to compare and contrast.

Tomorrow will be part two - writing the recipes. I have special paper, and the children will list the ingredients, and try to write the steps it takes to make a delicious and very healthy drink.