A Sensory Walk

Picture books provide the impetus for a study of how authors make plots seem real and characters interesting. After reading several books, class members list the techniques the authors used to enliven their stories and then craft their...

What do you imagine when you think of the sea? Put on some ocean sounds, close your eyes, and listen to a guided meditation based on the imagery from The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. After class members listen to the...

Sensory details can enhance the reading experience, especially during a guided imagery reading. Young readers close their eyes and listen to a passage from Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons before responding to discussion questions and...

An engaging unit connects Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson's shared themes of madness and departure from reality. The 10th lesson in the unit explores Dickinson's figurative language and structure choices in "I Felt a Funeral, in my...

A great way to reinforce descriptive writing, this lesson serves as an exploration of adjectives and sensory words. First, pupils describe a family tradition using as many sensory details as they can. Then, they try to draw a scene from...

Using their keen eyes and ears, learners build story observation skills which they will use to create sensory detail in their art. They note all of the things they observed on a walk, categorize them by sense, and then use the same skill...

Sensory details show the story instead of telling it. Emerging writers discuss ways to convey sensory details. They practice adding sensory details in a graphic organizer before adding details to their own scripts.

Read a sample of creative descriptive writing to your science class. Discuss how writing can be used to record and communicate observations that scientists make. Reading selections and thought-provoking questions are suggested. Also...

Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...

Use a Courbet painting of a cave or tunnel opening to reinforce the importance of descriptive writing. Writers of all ages use sensory details to describe what the scene depicts as they pretend to be in the painting. Then they imagine...