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Dear Colleague,
Thank you for your enthusiastic feedback to last week's newsletter! I loved hearing your students' responses, and the ways in which you adapted the lesson.
This week's lesson also focuses on detail. Learning to slow down time, and to include details that go beyond the obvious or the general, is a skill that has, perhaps, the greatest impact on writing. Why? Because doing so also increases voice, attention to word choice, and sentence fluency.
Happy writing!
Jennifer |
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Focusing on Details
On Hand: A wordless picture book, such as Flotsam by David Wiesner(2006).
Mini-Lesson: Begin telling this story by making up narration to go with the pictures, and model attention to the illustration details on each page. Point out that instead of saying "The boy saw a camera," you will say, "Now soaking wet, with seaweed caught between his toes, the boy noticed a camera lying in the sand."
After you have demonstrated this manner of telling for a few pages, invite individuals to come up and tell what happens next. Reinforce their ability to extract details from the illustrations and weave them into the telling. Complete the story in this way.
Guide students to understand that details in telling, and in writing, make the storytelling pop.
Extension: Remind students that drawing is an excellent form of prewriting. Suggest they try drawing the next scene of their work to discover details they might like to use in their writing.
Adapted from No More "I'm Done." Fostering Independent Writers in the Primary Classroom by Jennifer Richard Jacobson |
for primary teachers
