Descriptive Writing~Show, Not Tell

We've been working lately on making our writing more descriptive-and using show, not tell to help us with that.

I took some inspiration from last year, and the year before.

The basis of this lesson came from here.

We started out by talking about how to do descriptive writing, and what makes for a more interesting story.

Which led to the creation of an anchor chart :)

 I then wrote sad on the board, and we brainstormed different ways sad looked like.

We then wrote a 'tell' and a 'show' and I asked the students which one they would like to read. Hands down, the 'show' won!

We then did the same thing for happy.

I then used my brainstorm to draw a picture to 'show' what it looked like, and to give them an example of how to over-exaggerate it to 'show' while writing.

They then got a sticky of an emotion that they needed to draw.

After they spent some time thinking and drawing their emotion, we did a gallery walk.

This was for the others to see what their peers where doing, to see if they could guess what emotion was being shown (and if they didn't guess correctly or close, that friend needed to go back and make adjustments to their picture), and offer any suggestions.

 I made it clear that they did not have to take the suggestions, although they might want to think about how they could make it better.

They used sticky notes to share their thoughts.

After I gave them a few minutes to adjust or finish their pictures, I gave everyone an index card.

Using their picture, I had them write a 'tell' sentence and a 'show' paragraph. They were able to use the chart to help them-since it gave the perfect examples! ;)

I love how they turned out! I only hope they remember to incorporate into their writing :)

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn