Welcome to this Lesson:

Personifying
Abstractions

defining and writing about "relationships" between personified elements

This lesson was created for WritingFix by Northern Nevada Writing Project Teacher Consultant Jamie Priddy at a workshop for teachers.

This on-line writing prompt is inspired by J. Ruth Gendler's The Book of Qualities. Before writing to this assignment, students should discuss passages from this book.

Check out The Book of Qualities at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to see if this book is available at our local library system.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

This lesson shows students how personification can be used to give qualities to ideas in order to describe them in an effective and meaningful way. The students will look at some examples of how to personify an abstract noun, and then students will imitate the mentor text's examples by personifying an different abstraction of their choosing. The final product will be a description of the abstract noun using personification that is written as a piece of “prose poetry” or as a detailed description. Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait for this writing assignment is idea development; the writer will use unique, quality details to describe an abstract noun through personification. The support trait for this writing assignment is word choice; the writer will need to choose words that set a tone that fits the description of the abstract noun.

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 April 2010'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 access all past lessons, click here to visit the NNWP's webpage. You can start receiving all the new ones my creating a profile on-line at our site-sponsored Ning.