This Lesson's Title:

Writing Like an Artist Paints

crafting with color, texture, and shape words

This lesson was created by the
Northern Nevada Writing Project's
Co-Director, Kim Cuevas, who presented it at an
AT & T-sponsored inservice class for teachers.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 3 of the book.

Check out Chasing Vermeer at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

The writer will compose a descriptive paragraph that focuses on some object moving quickly past a character who is standing still.  Like Balliett does in Chasing Vermeer, the writer will use a healthy (both controlled) dose of artistic words, so the written scene comes across as painting-like.  The goal is to make writers more aware of the power of using words creatively in writing.  Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is word choice; basing word choices on a theme (in this case: artistic words) is a marvelous way to show the power of word choices.  The support trait in this assignment is idea development; using interesting and specific details should be the number one goal of the writer.

Recipient of the NNWP's
Excellent Writing Lesson Award:

Because of the quality of its resources and ideas, this WritingFix lesson was selected by the Northern Nevada Writing Project as May 2008's Writing Lesson of the Month. It was e-mailed to thousands of teachers who are members of the NNWP's Writing Lesson of the Month Teacher Network.

To quickly access all the WritingFix lessons that have been chosen as "Lesson of the Month," click here to visit the NNWP's archive. You can have a link to a high-quality writing lesson sent to you every month.