Writing with the Senses

“A Summer Day”

Author:

Libby Mims

San Angelo, TX

Grade Band: 4th Grade (may adapt for any age)

Estimated Lesson Time: 55-90 minutes, 3-5 days

Overview:

It is natural for young children to use writing and drawing as a way to represent and communicate ideas and experiences, especially when is related to their authentic social experience. This hands-on activity is designed to encourage students to use descriptive language related to the five senses in their writing. Because a child’s vocabulary is limited by his prior experience, students will have the opportunities to utilize collaboration and develop resource lists in order to expand their vocabulary. Finally, students will use their authentic experience and expanded vocabulary to respond to a writing prompt.

From Theory to Practice

Cunningham, P.M. & Allington, R. L. (2011). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn& Bacon

·  Children learn best when they have “real, direct experience with …learning...based on real things and real experience” (p.99).

·  When encountering new vocabulary, connections should be made with things in the child’s environment or prior experience.

Baumann, J.F., Ware, D. & Edwards, E.C. (2010). Bumping into spicy, tasty words that can catch your tongue: A formative experiment on vocabulary instruction. The Reading Teacher 61 (2) 108-122.

·  “Immersing students in a vocabulary-rich environment and providing them instruction in words and word-learning strategies, can help them develop greater breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge” (p. 108).

Lane, H.B. & Allen, S.A. (2010). The vocabulary-rich classroom: Modeling sophisticated word use to promote word consciousness and vocabulary growth. The Reading Teacher 63 (5) 362-370.

·  “Promoting incidental learning and word consciousness through frequent and deliberate modeling of sophisticated vocabulary can add substantial breadth to students’ vocabularies” (p. 362).

·  “Frequent encounters help students not only remember the meaning of words but also access word meanings more efficiently” (p. 366).

Student Objectives:

The student will:

·  engage in authentic experiences using the five senses.

·  work both independently and collaboratively to brainstorm descriptive words.

·  draft a written work about their experience using descriptive words.

·  utilize resources to extend a written draft.

Resources:

·  Instructional Materials:

·  Jar with pieces of candy or gum with a distinctive scent

·  Sentence sheet (Just Write Book 1, pp. 88-89)

·  Instruction Sheet for 1st day experience

·  4X6 index cards: each representing one of the following senses

·  sound

·  touch

·  smell and taste

·  sight

·  journals and pencils

·  watches or stopwatches

·  sentence starters for each day

·  word wall or word list

·  Handouts:

Words lists for the senses:

Sohn, D. A., & Enger, E. (1987) Writing by writing.

Extension Worksheets:

Wilmerding, E., & Bigelow, A. S. (2001) Just write: creativity and craft in writing

(Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing

Rubistar Rubric Retrieved from http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php?screen=PrintRubric&rubric_id=1178980&

Instructional Plan:

Day 1

Engage: (10 min.)

1.  Students will listen, smell, feel, and taste, and look at an item, each time having them describe what they have experienced and entertain their guesses.

2.  Students will review the 5 senses they used, assigning each to one finger of their hand:

·  sight

·  hearing

·  smell

·  taste (explain how taste and smell are related)

·  feel = touch and emotion* (discuss how they can consider both)

  1. Students will listen to a list of sentences and decide which sense is being described.

Explore:

1.  Students will go on a mini field trip around their campus. If students are to be allowed to go unsupervised, they will be given an instruction sheet for the experience.

2.  Students will have 20-30 minutes to walk around campus and use their senses to observe the environment:

  1. Time allotted will be 3-5 minutes for each of 4 cards.
  2. Cards correspond to each of the senses: hearing, taste and smell (combined), touch, and sight.
  3. Students will record their experiences on cards or in journals.
  4. Students are encouraged to limit their recording to descriptive word lists and phrases (adjectives and adverbs rather than nouns and verbs whenever possible).

3.  Students will return to the room and group (by table or pairs) and share, brainstorm and list as many new descriptive words as they can.

4.  Students will write descriptive words on sticky notes on posters that correspond to each sense.

5.  Students will demonstrate their ability to identify phrases that have to do with a particular sense.

6.  Students will use their hands to demonstrate their ability to recall each of the five senses.

Days 2-5

1.  Students will review one sense card each day and read the list of student generated descriptive words.

  1. Students will expand upon the student-generated list through resource lists (word wall or handouts for journals).
  1. Students will write a full paragraph description using one sense card each day, beginning with a choice of prompts from which to choose:

·  When I closed my eyes…

·  What I noticed first…

·  The most unusual thing…

·  I was surprised by….

·  It made me think…

·  I remembered the time…

Extensions:

1.  The lesson could be adapted as an observation lesson in science.

2.  Students could combine their descriptions with one of the following story prompts:

·  A summer day makes me feel….

·  My favorite summer day was…

·  I remember one unusual summer day…

·  That summer day, the most exciting thing…

·  The best way to stay cool on a summer day…

·  That summer day began like all the others, except…

3.  An extra day could be spent listing words that describe emotions* that could be combined with the activity above.

4.  Following extension activity #2, spend a second day brainstorming 3-5 synonyms for “forbidden words” (ex: happy, sad, good, bad, nice, mean, big, small, hot, cold pretty, ugly, old, young, easy, hard). Then have them edit or peer edit their narratives, replacing forbidden words from their newly generated word lists.

Student Assessment/Reflections:

·  Informally assess students’ understanding and ability to recall the senses.

·  Observe students’ ability to work both independently and in small groups.

·  Observe the students’ writing response activities.

·  Observe the students’ ability to draw new vocabulary from resource list.

·  Assess the students’ ability to identify phrases associated with each of the five senses.

·  Assess the final products through a rubric.

IRA/NCTE Standards/TEKS: Reading/Language Arts

4.15 The student writes for a variety of audiences and purposes, and in a variety of forms:

a: write to express, discover, record, develop, reflect on ideas, and to problem solve

c: write to inform such as to explain, describe, report, and narrate

4.19  The student selects and uses writing processes for self-initiated and assigned writing:

e: edit drafts for specific purposes such as to ensure standard usage, varied sentence

structure, and appropriate word choice