Let's face it!  Most 4th and 5th grade RSP kidsreally hate writing.  They will do almost anything to avoid writing assignments.  When they do succeed in writing a paragraph it is usually very brief, poorly organized, repetitive, and/or incredibly simplistic.

Subject: Language Arts
Topic: Descriptive Writing
Grade Level: 4th/5th RSP
Student Lesson Name and URL:  ctap295.ctaponline.org/~jwoods/student/

Fourth Grade

1.0 Writing Strategies
        Students write clear, coherent sentences and paragraphs that develop acentral idea.  Their writing shows they consider the audience andpurpose.  Students progress through the stages of the writing process(e.g., prewiting, drafting, revising, editing successive versions). 

1.0  Written and OralLanguage Conventions, Sentence Structures

1.2  Combine short,related sentences with appostitives, participalphrases, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases.

2.2 Write descriptions that use concrete sensory details to presentand support unified impressions  of people, places, things, or experiences. 

GRADE 4 

2.0. WRITING APPLICATIONS (GENRES AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS):

Studentswrite compositions thatdescribe and explain familiar objects, events, and experiences. Studentwriting demonstrates a command of standardAmerican English and the drafting, research, and organizational strategies outlined in Writing Standard 1.0.

   Actually, in this unit designed for 4th and 5th grade RSP students, the emphasiswill be on learning to use good, descriptive language (adjectives and adverbs) in paragraph writing.
 

InstructionalObjectives
 

1. After participating in an activityof drawing a monster and then describing what the student drew to anotherstudent ( who will then try to reproduce the same monster from the description)the students will be able to tell why good descriptive words are important.
2. After participating in a blindfoldedactivity in which a student must describe the properties of an object withoutnaming the object - how it feels, tastes, smells, sounds , etc.,the studentswill generate a list of adjectives to describe these objects.
3. After viewing interesting pictures,students will generate more adjectives to add to the previous list.
4. After reading examples of gooddescriptive writing and poor descriptive writing, students will generate a list of "dead" adjectives such as "cool", "good","nice","fun", "bad","big", etc., and provide two alternative, better adjectives to replacethese "dead" words.
5. Students will demonstrate theirunderstanding of good descriptive language by taking simple sentences andadding adjectives where appropriate.
6. Following an activity in whichstudents physically demonstrate a verb (such as jumping, running, clapping,etc.), and then performing the activity in different ways, fast, slowly,noisily, quietly, etc., students will explain the definition of adverb and cite examples.
7. Students will demonstrate theirunderstanding of adverbs by taking simple sentences and adding adverbs where appropriate.
8. Following a review of 5 sentenceparagraph writing, and given a writing prompt, students will write a gooddescriptive paragraph demonstrating their mastery level of descriptive writing.

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IntroductoryActivity
Activity 1
Students will link to the following website , print it out, and thenfollow the directions on that page. (Basically this lesson plan is aboutdrawing a picture of a monster, writing a description of what they havedrawn, then having another student read that description without seeingthe drawing and trying to recreate the original monster from the writtendescription. ) Purpose:  to understand the importance of good descriptivelanguage.

http://www.csnet.net/mindseye/monster_gallery/lesson2.GIF
http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/gen_act/believe/monster1.html
http://www.win4edu.com/minds-eye/monster.html

EnablingActivities 

1.  One by one, each studentis blindfolded and asked to describe the properties of an object that hemust feel, taste, smell, hear, etc.  The student is not to name theobject (tomato, pencil, orange, etc.) See the following site (click below) for an actual lesson plan.

http://teachingideas.co.uk/english/descriptivewriting.htm

CulminatingActivity
Students will write at least a 5 sentence paragraph using good descriptive language (adjectives andadverbs), being sure to avoid "dead" words such as "fun", "nice", etc.and then self editing for capitalization, punctuation, indenting, sentencemechanics, spelling, organization, etc.  It will be iimportant tohave taught and/or reviewed the steps of the writing process and the elementsof paragraph writing, such as topic, supporting and closing sentences. 

Once the students have donethe pre-writing (mind map, clustering, etc.) activity, rough draft, self-editing and final draft, they will share their paragraphs with others for constructive criticism, and then make revisions as necessary. 

Next, each student will drawa picture for their paragraph (illustrating the adjectives and descriptive language they have writtten).  They could then use a wordprocessorto print the final product and a classroom book could be made.

An alternative to this wouldbe to have students search for images, pictures, or scenery on the net or in the general environment, than write a descriptive paragraph aboutthat.
 

Click the following site for an activity on adverbs.
http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Lessons/Lang_arts/Writing_omp/WCP0001.html

http://genxtvland.simplenet.com/SchoolHouseRock/grammar.hts?hi

 

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Introductory Activity

http://www.csnet.net/mindseye/monster_gallery/lesson2.GIF
http://www.eduplace.com/rdg/gen_act/believe/monster1.html
http://www.win4edu.com/minds-eye/monster.html

Enabling Activity

http://teachingideas.co.uk/english/descriptivewriting.htm

Culminating Activity

http://ericir.syr.edu/Virtual/Lessons/Lang_arts/Writing_omp/WCP0001.html

http://genxtvland.simplenet.com/SchoolHouseRock/grammar.hts?hi

 

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Brooks Elementary
Windsor
Jeanette Woods:jwoods@wusd.org
Last Revised: 06/09/2001