Descriptive Writing Assignment Lesson Plans Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

Think critically about the importance of memory and history in their own lives and in larger historical contexts. Use multiple sources of information to create their own personal descriptive writing. Place a transparency of the excerpt from chapter 10 of the giver on the overhead projector. Ask for two student volunteers to read the parts of the giver and jonas, as you read the narrated elements of the excerpt.

Help Writing Dissertation Proposal Services

focusing on the giver's comments about wisdom and shaping the future, facilitate a brief discussion of the importance of memory, history, and storytelling. Encourage students to use examples from their lives, history, and the book to support their points. Conclude class by distributing the reflecting on the importance of memory handout for students to respond to for the next session.

    begin this session by discussing students' responses to the reflecting on the importance of memory handout.

explain that during this session students will be taking a break from reading the giver and visiting at a web site that believes very strongly in the importance of memory as they do some research connected to today's date and their birthday or another significant date of their choice. Distribute copies of the memories matter: a look at the american memory website handout and discuss the activity. Have students choose a date for their independent research and record it in the appropriate space on the handout. As a class, go to the american memory website and complete the column for this day in history by looking through the information, following links as appropriate. Model for students the process of recording the event, summarizing some key facts, and reflecting on the event's significance. Give students time to research and respond to their findings for the date of their choice. End the session by having students share some of their reflections for their individually chosen dates.

Narrative Essay Quinceanera

Discuss why such a website is important, especially in light of the conversation at the beginning of the session. Depending on your group, you may also wish to discuss the problems inherent in a website that chooses just an event or a few events to feature. Who or what is represented? who makes those decisions?

    review with students their work from the previous session, reminding students of the content and presentation on the american memory website.
distribute the thinking about varied expressions of memories and history questions and ask students to choose one of the prompts to respond to briefly. Tell students that in this session, they will discuss responses to option one, saving responses to option two for a future session. Discuss responses to option one, which will likely involve comments about the factual, perhaps dry nature of the content and presentation on the website. Connecting to students' responses about the personal and descriptive nature of an account they write about their own lives, distribute and discuss the descriptive writing analysis handout.

If necessary, quickly elicit examples of sensory details that fall into each of the five categories. As you read chapter 11 of the giver in class, complete handout together, modeling the understanding of how lowry's descriptive choices function. At the end of the session, give students time to choose their own experience to render through descriptive language.

Remind them that language related to the various senses should be chosen appropriately they need not refer to all five senses and may rely more heavily on one or two than the others.

    to begin this session, have students share some of their completed paragraphs. Classmates should try to determine what experience the author is trying to convey, as jonas did in the giver.
collect the completed paragraphs and provide formative feedback on students' use of description to convey an experience. You may wish to use the descriptive memoir rubric as a guide to potential areas of feedback, but such formal response is not necessary at this point. Explain to students that this paragraph is an example of the type of writing they will be doing in their upcoming memoir assignment.

Distribute and discuss the memories matter: a descriptive memoir project handout. Stress the ways that memoir differs from other personal narrative writing such as biography and autobiography. Refer back to the option two responses from the thinking about varied expressions of memories and history questions as you go over the assignment. Students will likely have mentioned their friends' and families' memories and photographs as good sources of information about their own personal histories. These two types of sources will be the focus of future activities, but feel free to allow students to use sources such as official documents, their own past writings formal and informal , family videos, or other valid options to complete the activity. Share with students that they will be continuing their examination of different kinds of historical records by getting ideas for their memoir from at least three different sources: their own memory, a personal interview, and a photograph or other appropriate sources, as you see fit.

Some students will have little trouble completing this portion of the assignment others will need more support. Consult these resources for ideas for additional instructional activities: watch the readwritethink video helping a teen plan and conduct an interview and read the accompanying show notes. Listen to this npr podcast in which walter dean myers talks about the importance of storytelling, writing his memoirs, and using photographs as inspiration. See the readwritethink lesson a picture's worth a thousand words: from image to detailed narrative for ideas in helping students move from picture to story. Give students a date by which they need to have chosen an event and related photograph and interview subject to write about. By this date they will have the photograph in their possession and they will have interviewed the friend or family member for their memories of the chosen event.

Note: you may wish to have an intermediate date by which students tell you what they are planning for the memoir.

    ask students to get out their interview notes and photograph as you distribute the planning your descriptive memoir handout.
discuss with students how to use their notes and resources to brainstorm as many details, words, phrases for use in their draft. Distribute and discuss the descriptive memoir rubric to guide students as they begin writing. A teacher designed this project with two goals in mind: 1 to improve students' writing by incorporating photography into descriptive and narrative writing exercises designed to inspire more varied and creative perspectives and 2 to enhance visual as well as verbal literacy.

Web english teacher presents the best of k 12 english language arts teaching resources: lesson plans, videos, e texts, technology integration, criticism, and classroom activities. This lesson employs scientific observation, descriptive writing, sketching, reading, investigation, and poetry writing to train students to use their senses and focus their attention. The lesson is designed to enhance cognitive skills used in nearly every discipline and can serve as a prelude to an inquiry project, scientific investigation, art project, or descriptive writing assignment. When students truly learn to see, they are on the path to becoming more engaged, curious, reflective thinkers. I just need to draw: responding to literature across multiple sign systems. By constructing meaning in a variety of ways, including drawing, scientific observation, and poetry writing, students can form more complex understandings of the subject under study. Children are encouraged to think and reflect creatively and to position themselves as meaning makers and inquirers short, kauffman, amp kahn, 20.

I have been teaching three levels in language arts 9, 11, and 12 for seven years. This includes reading to kill a mockingbird, house on mango street, romeo and juliet, and many supplementary stories, articles, poems, etc… , writing skills, grammar, and speaking. The class mainly focuses on reading skills, with writing and speaking used to supplement.

The students are usually lower in skill level and work with practicing practical writing and reading. I've attended various conferences, including a national conference in nashville and writing conferences in ann arbor and new orleans. I include different projects, test styles and writing genres to meet the educational needs of all my students. I don't teach to a textbook in any of my classes, so i have to create or use existing materials for my classroom.

I have a bachelors in english education, a minor in philosophy and a masters in professional education. I've not only studied literature around the world, but also have studied the craft of teaching and the philosophies of the world. I love reading all types of literature, watching all kinds of movies and listening to all types of music.

lesson plans for a creative writing course

this page contains the complete lesson plans for a thirteen week course in creative writing which i taught for lane community college for 22 years, most recently spring quarter, 2002.

Legal Report Writing Training