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Descriptive Prompt: Precise Language
Incorporate sensory details into a piece of descriptive writing. First, elementary and middle schoolers improve a piece of writing by using precise, vivid language, as well as appropriate word choice. They then listen to a variety of...
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Further Improvements of Writing Skills
Improve writing skills by finding a personal writing style, using descriptive language effectively, and using precise language. Middle schoolers discuss individual style in writing and formal and informal language. They utilize figures...
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Changing Seasons
Explore expository writing and using precise language in this descriptive paragraph writing lesson plan. Learners brainstorm prior knowledge about the changing seasons in Ohio. They describe seasonal items, view seasonal pictures from...
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Creative Writing Workshop (Middle, Reading/Writing)
Bring this lesson into your unit about creative writing and precise language. First, middle schoolers create a piece of writing with the help of their classmates. In the second part of this workshop, they edit their own piece of writing....
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Shakespeare and Poe Teach Six-Trait Writing
A Six-Trait Writing instructional activity helps your middle schoolers liven up their word choice and shows them how to evaluate their own writing. Class members take a close look at the language used in poems by Shakespeare, Kipling,...
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Vivid Verbs
Spice up your writing! Your amateur writers will benefit from concentrating on understanding and improving verb use in writing. An introductory activity addresses weak verbs. A second exercise helps them see the importance of strong...
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Reliving History through Slave Narratives
Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this instructional activity prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct...
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Precise Vocabulary
Students complete acting exercises as a part of a precise language activity to help them build vocabulary and improve their descriptive writing skills. In this theatre and writing instructional activity, students create and act out a...
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Borrowing Narrative Skills from Mr. Fletcher: Using a "Prompts in Reverse" Technique to Inspire Your Writers
Help your class find their writing voices with this activity which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher what they...
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Writing and Presenting a Fable Using Research
Elementary and middle schoolers research animal facts and use them in a fable. First, they pair-share to find animal traits to use in writing a fable. They then complete a prewriting worksheet. After going through the writing process,...
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Choose Your Words Wisely
Improve word choice! Writers use dictionaries and thesauruses to aid them in choosing exciting words to incorporate in their writing. They rewrite sentences and practice identifying words that can be replaced using a better word. Flip...
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Describe a Journey
Students describe the sensory experience of a character's journey in an essay. In this precise details writing lesson, students explain the effects on the senses of weather, time of day, landscape, and other experiences. Students use...
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Building Believable Characters
Students use descriptive strategies such as physical descriptions, background, and comparison of characters when writing narratives. They develop the topic with supporting details and precise diction to paint a visual image in the...
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Character Impressions
Whether you are planning a unit on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, or simply want to improve your pupils' descriptive writing, this lesson plan could be a good addition to your class. Using the Six-Trait Writing process, pupils...
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A PLAY ON WORDS
After making predictions about Janell Cannon's story Verdi, middle schoolers read through the book and make a new list of descriptions, personality traits, etc. They select an animal and write a narrative story about the animal, paying...
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Getway to More Descriptive Writing
Students use more precise descriptive words in their writing.
Virginia Department of Education
Using Specific Vocabulary and Collaboration
Develop concepts on how to change your improving wordsmiths' writing from blah to wow with the activities and ideas in this resource. The instructor provides the class with examples of writing that lacks detail and precision, and then...
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Show, Don't Tell: Details to Make Writing Come Alive
After each of three viewings of a 45-second video, aspiring writers employ vivid adjectives and precise, strong verbs to "show, don't tell." First they compose a single sentence, then three, and finally a five-sentence paragraph. Repeat...
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Personify This
Eighth graders study personification in published works of poetry, then create their own through the use of diamante or cinquain poetry. They read and discuss poetry by Shel Silverstein, William Jay Smith, and Elinor Wylie.
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I See and I Think (It's A Wonderful World)
Students analyze song lyrics (by listening to the song) to pick-out descriptive vocabulary. They use this descriptive vocabulary to create a drawing of the images they "see" in the song. They compare their drawings to find similarities...
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Thinking Syntactically: Using non-print text to faciliate generation of syntax and analysis of tone
Students write with a command of the stylistic aspects of composition. They respond to non-print text. Students demonstrate working knowledge of syntactical choices. They construct sentences using descriptive language. Students analyze...
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The House that Dies Drear Built
Students write a descriptive paragraph, in the style of Virginia Hamilton, describing the landscape around their house.
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Composition in Journals
Carlos Fuentes’s The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait and Jaspre Bark’s Journal of Inventions: Leondardo da Vince serve as models for an assignment that asks class members to create a personal journal they will use...
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Beautiful Noise Poetry
"What a beautiful noise comin' up from the street; got a beautiful sound, it's got a beautiful beat..." Use Neil Diamond's "Beautiful Noise" to guide your class through a Six Trait writing activity, in which they write an original poem...