By: Brooke Powell
SWP - 2014
Agenda for the Workshop:
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Introduction to roadblock
Example writings at beginning of year
How can descriptive writing be taught?
Creating anchor charts/ Why are they
important?
Group discussions/Share time
Example of descriptive language/
Partner Activity
Mentor Text – Owl Moon by Jane Yolen –
Group Activities
Word Cloud Activity
Example writing at end of year
Practice/Slice of Life
I have identified my instructional roadblock as
being able to have my Kindergarten students
write more without being repetitive and sounding
dull by incorporating the use of descriptive
language into their writings.
My goal In teaching them how to use descriptive
language appropriately is that their writings will
be more interesting and full of details and it will
encourage them to use new vocabulary words
that they may have not known how to use before.
“Good descriptive writing includes many
vivid sensory details that paint a picture
and appeals to all of the reader's senses
of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste
when appropriate. Descriptive writing
may also paint pictures of the feelings the
person, place or thing invokes in the
writer.”
-Reading Rockets.org
Google images
Lines from children books with examples of
great descriptive language
Teaching Descriptive Language
Effectively
***I will monitor students’ progress by having a rotating
conferencing schedule so that I will be able to see their
writings weekly to make sure they are adding descriptive
language to their pieces.***
Google image
Google image
Google image
Unpack Your Adjectives Song School House Rocks
My Strategy
Once my students have mastered writing simple sentences, I encourage
them to add a little sparkle to their work. For example, if a student
writes “The cat sits,” have them explain what the cat looks like, how it
feels and where it sits. Continue by guiding them through the creation of
a new sentence. For example: “The big cat sits happily on the chair.”
This is a great activity to use when teaching my students how to add
descriptive words. I model this activity with my students several times to
help them understand and master the concept.
Turn and talk with a partner at your table about the following
questions:
1. Have you see that your students have struggled
with incorporating the use of descriptive language in
their writing?
2. If so , what are the trends you see in their writings?
Ex; being repetitive etc.
3. Why do you think students struggle with adding
descriptive language to their writing?
4. What strategies have you used to teach descriptive
writing to your students in your classroom?
First, let’s get it clear that the house is practically
falling down, but for some reason that doesn’t
make any difference to how beautiful it is. It’s
made out of big chunks of yellowish stone, and
has a steep roof, and is shaped like an L around a
big courtyard with fat pebbles set in the ground.
The short part of the L has a wide arched doorway
and it used to be the stable, but now it’s the
kitchen and it’s huge, with zigzag brick floors and
big windows all across the front.
Study Driven – Pg 58
• She put a negative and turned it into a positive
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She used personification
Word choice was positive
Words are colorful and warm
Words are specific and descriptive
She was precise with her word choice
Had an oxymoron in her writing
“Learning new words helps them
(students) to master new subject matter
more quickly and solidifies their
understanding of it. Reading and
understanding more difficult texts and
speech will be easier for children who
have a good grasp of descriptive
language.”
-Leyla Norman, Demand Media
Get out a piece of paper
 Listen to the first two minutes of the story Owl
Moon by Jane Yolen
 After I stop I want you to create a picture of
how you visualized Jane Yolen’s interpretation of
what was read based on her use of descriptive
language in the text
 Also write down the descriptive words that you
hear that helped you to create a picture in your
mind 
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Book Flix Owl Moon
Do we have any volunteers who
would like to share their pictures?
What words did you “hear” that
helped you to create your picture in
the first 2 minutes of Jane Yolen’s
Owl Moon?
 This
will engage students and they have the
opportunity to help me create something
that will be useful to them. It will also help
me to assess if the students listened to the
story and understand what descriptive
language is. They can use this to create their
own word clouds with other books that they
read or about a writing topic that they are
struggling to add descriptive language in.
You have two different options  You can choose to revise the
writing below by adding descriptive language to make it sound
better and to help create a picture in the reader’s mind OR you
can write your own “slice of life” like Jane Yolen did in the story
Owl Moon. If you choose this route then you need to write about
an experience that you remember with an animal, pet or special
person. Make sure to remember the tools we have learned about
using descriptive language and make sure to incorporate those
words into your writing!  You have 15 minutes and then we will
share
I was nervous about meeting new classmates.
Would they be nice to me? Would there be new
kids? I found out that all of my classmates were
nice. The new kids fit right in. I wondered what
the teachers would be like to. I wondered if they
would be mean. I wondered if they would like
me.
Click below to find a list of books
that you can use in your
classroom to help with this
strategy
Descriptive Writing Mentor Texts 1
More mentor texts
“When students write from
experience, they can breathe
those specifics into their
writing- dialect, odd smells,
precise names of plants- that
can animate even the most
tired and tedious text.”
― Ralph Fletcher
What a Writer Needs
Excerpts from A Writer’s Notebook: Unlocking the Writer Within You
By: Ralph Fletcher
Resources
Fletcher, Ralph. What a Writer Needs: Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann. 1993.
Print
Norman, Leyla. What Is the Importance of Children Using Descriptive Words
in a Sentence?, n.d. Web. 10 June 2014.
http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/importance-children-usingdescriptive-words-sentence-15948.html
Ray, Katie Wood. Study Driven: Portsmouth, NH. Heinemann. 2006. Print
“Reading Rockets.” Descriptive Writing Strategies, n.d. Web. 12 June 2014.
http://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/descriptive_writing