By Mary Ledbetter

Writing On Demand: Increasing Your Students’ Success

When Writing to Prompts on Writing Assessments

(Use these in your writing assignments to help improve

sentence fluency, word choice, and voice.)

1. Magic 3 – Three parallel groups of words, usually separated by commas that create a poetic rhythm or add support for a point, especially when the three word groups have their own modifiers.

Magic 3 Examples

· Jeff and Sue skipped to the candy store, selected Reese’s and M & M’s to munch on, and raced to the corner park to play with their friends. (3 verbs in a sequence with description.)

· The teacher assigned a writing project for the semester, presented all the details to her class, and gave the students thirty minutes to get started on their project. (3 verbs in a sequence with description.)

· I love playing hide-and-seek with my friends in our woods, jumping rope on the school playground, and swinging on the old tire at Grandma’s. (3 “ing” words in a sequence with description.)

2. Figurative Language – Non-literal comparisons such as similes, metaphors, personification and hyperbole to add “spice” to writing and to help paint a more vivid picture for the reader.

Figurative Language Examples

· His hair is like peach fuzz. (simile)

· Her smile is the sun in his day. (metaphor)

· In the morning when the sun comes up, where does the night hide? (personification)

· There is no escaping the light-blue sky. It is wherever I am. It goes wherever I go. (hyperbole)

· Crash, bang, boom, the thunder boomed in the night sky. (onomatopoeia)

3. Specific Details for Effect – Instead of general, vague descriptions, specific sensory details help the reader visualize the person, place, thing, or idea that the writer is describing.

Specific Details for Effect Examples

· Her boyfriend sits in the second row from the left, third seat, in front of Claudia and behind Milton.

· He had a bad day. He made a grade on his spelling test that would make his Mama’s face scrunch up like it does when she’s really mad (especially at Daddy); it started raining when he was walking home, and to top it off he fell in a puddle—bad grade and all—because he was thinking about how he was going to feel being grounded for a week.

· The crocodile wanted to be a famous dancer. He wanted to wear a frilly, pink dress and ballet shoes and to dance in a ballet.

4. Repetition for Effect – Writers often repeat specially chosen words or phrases to make a point, to stress certain ideas for the readers.

Repetition for Effect Examples

· His dentist always asks the same questions: how old are “we” now, how are “we” doing in school, and how have “we” been treating our little friends. Of course, by now he knows that the dentist means “our” teeth.

· Laura didn’t have to seal the envelope, she didn’t have to receive the congratulations letter, she didn’t have to gaze happily at her mother’s astonished yet proud face, to know that she was a winner.

· Filled with new inspiration and soaring spirits, Laura picked up her pencil and a clean stack of paper, and wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

5. Expanded Moment – Instead of “speeding” past a moment, writers often emphasize it by “expanding” the action.

Expanded Moment Examples

· I sat down, crossed my legs, flipped my hair away from my face, and began to write.

· I watch Georgia run through Thompson Park… I am out of breath when I finally catch up with her. I run my hand along her back, soft as a feather pillow. I pat her heaving sides and scratch her ears, but she hardly acknowledges my presence. I command her to sit, and she does so, but her mind is elsewhere.

· He reached up to the top shelf, chose the blue covered book, opened to the first page, turned to face the class with a big smile and began to read with enthusiasm.

6. Humor – Professional writers know the value of laughter; even subtle human can help turn a “boring” paper into one that can raise someone’s spirits.

Humor Examples

· There she was on the first day of school—the picture-perfect girl. Her new outfit looked like something from her big sister’s magazine. Her hair—for once—was having a good day, and she was strutting in her new shoes. Little did she know that she was trailing a three-yard piece of Charmin behind her. So much for using the bathroom right before class!

· My toes point in, and my shoulders droop, and there’s hair growing out of my ears.

· The vacuum cleaner’s swallowed Will. He’s vanished. What a drag! Still, we can do without him till it’s time to change the bag!

7. Hyphenated Modifier – Sometimes a new way of saying something can make all the difference; hyphenated adjectives often cause the reader to “sit up and take notice.”

Hyphenated Modifier Examples

· Her mother gave her the famous you-better-get-to-your-room-now-and-make-it-shine-before-I-get-to-your-behind look. (Much more powerful than: Her mother gave her a stern look.)

· “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you!” Mom shouted in her remember-I’m-your-boss voice.

· You know those girls with the I-have-to-keep-this-smile-painted-on-my-face-or-I-won’t-win-the-election faces.

· The town was scared. Old women hired boy scouts for bodyguards, banks locked each and every dollar in its own separate, bulletproof-waterproof-fireproof-and-every-other-proof safe, and old man Hutcherson was sitting in his rocking chair chained to his door.

· “Somehow, though, he’s got Mom fooled. When she’s around, he plays the I’m-just-the-poor-little-picked-on-innocent-kid part real well.” “Mom was staring at me with one of those I’m–not-at-all-sure-if-I-believe-you looks, and I was doing my best to look as sick as I could.” – from Bug Off! By Terri Fields

8. Full-Circle Ending – Sometimes students need a special ending, one that effectively “wraps up” the piece. One “trick” is to repeat a phrase – perhaps with slightly different wording – from the beginning of the piece.

Full-Circle Ending Examples

· Math class—it’s like a foreign language, a mystery, a puzzle. First day—my luck—we do fractions. Invert and multiply. I’ve got it memorized, but when do I do it? The teacher talks in numbers, not words, and when she uses words, there’s always a catch—something about trains or planes leaving cities at some time and how fast were they going. She calls them “story” problems. What kind of story is that—the boring kind? Math class—it’s like a foreign language.

· Beginning: I sit quietly on the old wooden deck, watching the birds soar through the humid air. The ocean’s waves are like wrinkles gathered up in place.

Ending: The clouds are so delicate, so fragile, yet a single plane could not break their perfect form. I sit quietly on the old wooden deck, watching the birds, the waves, the clouds.

-A special thank you to Robin James for her eighth-grade students’ examples.