brainstorming three sensory details about a personal memory
before writing about it
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Ideas for Teachers from Teachers How do you teach young writers to carefully select sensory details to include in a piece of personal writing?
Example Blurb: I love to use all of Patricia MacLachlan's books when I am helping students explore powerful sensory details. Her All the Places to Love is one of the sweetest memoirs ever written, and its a marvelous book to share and show what strong sensory details sound like in writing. It's always useful to make a five-column chart before you read the book--one column for each sense--and to have the students listen for words and phrases in the text that help the reader feel the same sensations as the author.
I build some background/schema with texts and experiences as much as possible. My first grade group was having difficulties with "descriptive writing. I read Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert as a anchor text; then we took a sensory walk outside. As we walked, I encouraged the children to listen to the wind rustling in the trees and the noises our feet made as we walked, feel the cool wind on our faces and observe the many colors of the leaves. We returned to the classroom, re-read portions of the text,brain-stormed ideas using descriptive, sensory words from our walk and wrote! Once they started thinking about how a leaf sounds blowing through the air or how "fall smells," their writings turned into a sensory explosion!
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