Hello,
Does anyone have ideas for descriptive writing lesson plans. I need to come up with a lesson plan for four days. Any ideas?
Thanks

[Bobbi4178]

Well, I just recently finished a descriptive writing piece with my students. If you're doing the writing process with them, I started with a model of a description piece of two people. The students did their pre-writing the first day by making a class list of 2 people they could write about (2 parents, 2 cousins, 2 teachers, 2 friends, 2 coaches, etc.) As long as it's two people they can compare. They chose who they their two people and drew pictures of each of them, then made a list of describing words for each person with the pictures. The next day they circled any words that were the same about each person. And turned all their words into a venn diagram to compare the two. When They were ready for the drafting stage, they wrote sentences about how they were both the same, then they wrote on a separate page about the first person, then again on a separate page for the second. For the Revising stage, they looked at their papers and were taught how to add words in (to make it better). For example: She has brown hair. Can be changed to: She has long brown hair. Then they edited looking for missing periods and capitals. The last step was publishing, at which time t hey wrote their final copies and we turned it into a class book.

[liketeaching1]

I sometimes let my kids look at a picture from a book or story in our basal. They write to describe what they are seeing. We make sure that we use adjectives.

[jerzgirl]

I use beanie babies. I display about 15 different beanie baby animals on the chalk tray. They look at them and secretly choose one to write about. They have to write at least 3 sentences to describe the beanie baby and then we play a guessing game. A lot of the kids "get" it, but others just write simple clues. For example- I am small. This leads to lots of discussion and we do a second round the next day to see if they can describe more clearly which animal they chose. Lots of fun. I also use this to extend vocabulary, discussing synonyms and strong adjectives.

[liketeaching1]

I gave the kids all the same bunny heads. The girls got bunny "girl clothes" and the boys got bunny "boy clothes". They all colored them as they wished. Then they wrote descriptions of what theirs looked like. I hung them across the front of the dry erase board and numbered them. As I read a description the kids had to guess which one it was. Some had brown fur, some had white. Of course their ears, eyes, clothes, etc. also were described. IT was a fun way to write descriptions and the kids realized that the more thought they put into their paragraphs the easier it was to "figure out".

[jerzgirl]

Love the bunny idea! I'll file that for next spring. Thanks.

[iluv2nd]

of each child in his/her favorite reading spot at school and the kids wrote descriptions and told why they liked each spot. I also sent home disposable cameras and the kids each took photos of themselves reading in their favorite at home reading spots and did the same kind of writing. If the kids were older, I would have had them compare the two and write again... It made a cute hallway display as well. Forget the exact caption... Something like "Take a peak at our reading lives..."

[shantina]

During my planting unit, I have had the kids make flowers out of cut construction paper. They made them any way they wanted but they had to include the parts of a plant. This was day 1. After they made their flower they had to describe it in words using descriptive language. THen when everyone was done, I put each flower on the white board without the kid's names. Then they each read their description and the class had to guess which flower belonged to whom. We talked about how good authors write great descriptions and if they wrote a great description then the rest of the class s hould be able to guess which flower was theirs on the 1st or 2nd try. It was a good teaching point because the kids who had trouble writing descriptions were encouraged by the rest of the class because the class would tell them what else they could have included to make their description better.

[althomp]

I did the Beanie Baby activity in my first grade classroom today and the kids loved it! Their descriptions were fantastic and it totally met my objectives