[Times photo: Jim Damaske]
Sue Aven holds up a gift, a signal to her second-grade students at Academie Da Vinci to "wrap up" their stories. Last month, the school received a grant that will allow it to share its special programs, including Aven's writing program, with other charter schools.

Aven has been on staff at Academie Da Vinci for three years after a two-semester internship at the school. Early on, she knew the secret to good writing was planning, but she didn't have much luck getting the idea across to her young pupils.

"If they could see what they were trying to accomplish, it would make sense," Aven remembered thinking.

So last year, she came up with the game. And this year, she implemented it as part of her curriculum.

The kids seemed to be catching on, Aven said.

"The use of color hit home, and they were understanding the organization of a story."

In the game, Aven picks a topic and asks her students to choose three main ideas. She writes each idea inside a colored box and has them write a sentence about the idea in black. Then, she asks them to write a few sentences that support the idea in a colored pencil that matches the box color.

Once the students have enough of one color on the page, a super hero called Tran Man jumps in and helps them glide to the next idea with a transition.

To give her students examples of appropriate transitions at each point in the story, Aven posted a list of them on the wall.

At the end of the essay, after each idea is fleshed out with color, Aven holds up a wrapped gift and asks them to "wrap things up."

Second-grader Ashley Gillum, 7, gets the idea. "Say all your ideas. Don't use a big old story again," she explained to the class.

Aven will soon be passing her idea along to other teachers. Last month, Academie Da Vinci received a $47,000 grant from the Public Charter School Federal Grant Program to share a variety of programs, including Aven's, with other charter schools.

In a recent class, Aven's students put the exercise into action. For a story on winter, her students chose three ideas: snow, holidays and toys. Aven displayed a poster-board model with green, blue and red construction paper squares in the front of the room, filling in each square with an idea.

After a short review, she split her class into six groups to work on stories. They pulled out their colored pencils and crafted short stories. Fifteen minutes later, Aven invited each group to the front of the room to present their essays.

In each bunch, a volunteer took the role of Tran Man and flashed a black and white sketch of the super hero with each transition.

The technique makes sense to first-grader Panteli Skaroulis, 6.

"It helps us get things in the right place," he said.

The use of color has affected their writing in several ways, Aven said. Her students keep journals in plain pencil, but the colorful essays she assigns in class have more elaboration. And, as a bonus, their handwriting has improved, Aven added.

Aven also brings color into the classroom for flow charts, vocabulary cards and geometry lessons to highlight important facts and grab her young students' attention.

Aside from practical matters, color makes the writing task fun, Aven said.

Students in Sue Aven's class come equipped with a box full of colored pencils when they begin their writing lessons.

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