Teaching Students to Write Descriptions
Teaching students to write descriptions is identified as an important skill. Children should have a strong foundation in writing descriptions "because those skills will enhance nearly everything that they write"(page 141)--and across subject areas. In order to teach descriptive writing, the authors have outlined a lesson sequence for teaching informative writing through the use of descriptions. My students struggle with descriptive writing. Language is so important in this area--we use a thesaurus to help us when writing. Good and cool are words I won't allow--even when we are talking about something in class--we have to find a different way to say the same thing.
There are 3 Phases, with a pre-assessment before Phase 1 and an assessment at the end of each Phase. This chapter has many examples of student work and examples of teacher modeling the steps.
On page 143, there is an outline of Phase 1--Learning about descriptions and is broken into 4 different teaching steps. Overall, the goal in Phase 1 is to"expose students to many description examples" (page 145). In Phase 2, the students learn how to evaluate descriptions and on page 151, there is an outline of the steps. Phase 3 involves students learning to write lessons, composed of steps 7-11 and assessment 4. I found it interesting in Phase 3-the learning to write phase--each step incorporated a graphic organizer. I think graphic organizers are an important aspect of writing. On page 161 there is a list of topics to encourage descriptive writing.
My students struggle with descriptive writing--I find language delays can hinder their ability to write. How do you address descriptive writing? Do you incorporate graphic organizers in your writing instruction? What topics do you use for descriptive writing activities?
When we practice descriptive writing in my classroom, I try to give the students a topic that is very relatable in which they can formulate many sentences. These types of prompts may be about places they have been, an object important to them, or any other connectable idea.
ReplyDeleteI always include graphic organizers during writing instruction. This helps the students keep their ideas organized and keeps them from rambling and including irrelevant information. We use webs most of the time, just because you can make an unlimited about of bubbles and connect ideas to each other.