Roald Dahl
Matilda - Miss Honey and The Trunchbull
As the instructor reads aloud several quotes from five chapters of the story Matilda, class members mime their interpretation of the scenes. Then, after reading "Miss Honey" and "The Trenchbull" (chapters seven and eight), the...
Curated OER
Strong Descriptive Writing: James and the Giant Peach
Support your writers! Clear procedures and appropriate support make this a superb resource for elementary writing instruction. Ready your class to compose original descriptive paragraphs inspired by the episode in Roald Dahl's James and...
Curated OER
A Creative Presentation
Bring writing to life with this lesson in which elementary and middle schoolers create a display of the imagery they identify in a series of Gary Paulsen books. They read the suggested materials, identify imagery and descriptive...
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Imagining China through Words
When Europeans first came back with tales of China, they provided vivid written accounts and minimal visual imput. This resulted in art rendered mostly from descriptive language. Learners explore this phenomena by listening to...
Curated OER
Strong Verb Image Makers
Students use description language to clarify ideas and create vivid images in an essay focusing of strong verbs. They discuss weak verbs and explore that the better image the words create, the better the reader understands the text.
Curated OER
Let's Go Exploring!
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...
Curated OER
Descriptive Writing: Using Art to Inspire description
Write with the senses! Try using art to inspire writers to consider all of the senses. Here, the class is divided in half. Each group looks at one of two images, imagines the senses that would be engaged, and records answers to five...
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The Stuff of Stories: Using Museums to Inspire Student Writing
Middle schoolers write descriptions, narratives, and dialogues based on objects of art and time periods in a museum. They base several writing assignments on art objects and paintings, including a literal description and an emotional...
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Foreign Language Lip-Sync Karaoke Contest
Teach your class about foreign language through transcribing lyrics. They will transcribe the lyrics of a song in a foreign language and use the lyrics to create a cloze activity as they listen and speak the language with their...
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Carnival of the Animals and Aquarium and Magic Fish
Engage little learners in this moderately developed three-instructional activity unit on the composer Camille Saint-Saens and his piece "The Carnival of Animals." Each instructional activity includes a listening, discussion, and an art...
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Lesson: Mad Lib Leigh!
A fun and quirky painting is analyzed for details in an art/literacy lesson. Youngsters look for colors, shadows, and details and then describe them using vivid language. They use the words from discussion to complete a fun Mad Lib-style...
Curated OER
DESCRIPTIVE WORDS
Students examine descriptive language. In a worksheet activity, they practice writing a one-page description of an event, trying to use descriptive words. They also describe a noun, e.g. rabbit, using descriptive language.
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Picture This
Give your littlest learners the opportunity to learn how to discuss, observe, and visualize. First, they determine if the image they are looking at is a photograph or a painting. Then they work together to brainstorm words that describe...
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Story Telling through Photography
Use this writing and photography lesson plan in your descriptive writing unit. Elementary and middle schoolers write and create a story line incorporating photos from Inspiration or their own personal photos. They experiment with...
Curated OER
Idioms in Everyday Language
Students create an iPhoto book exhibiting a variety of idioms that describe feelings. They take photos using a digital camera that show students exhibiting the feelings explained by the idioms.
Curated OER
An Imaginary Creature And Then Using Describing And Action Words for a Creative Writing Exercise
You have to collect lots of materials (boxes, bags, toilet paper rolls, etc.) for this lesson to work successfully. After modeling how to create an imaginary creature out of the collection of recycled materials, let your class search...
Curated OER
Pictures, Photographs, and Captions
"How do photographs contribute to an autobiography?" Laurence Yep's The Lost Garden provides learners with an opportunity to examine how photos and their captions contribute to and clarify events in a story. Class members use expressive...
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Composition in Journals
Carlos Fuentes’s The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait and Jaspre Bark’s Journal of Inventions: Leondardo da Vince serve as models for an assignment that asks class members to create a personal journal they will use...
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Lesson: Possible Perspectives
Visual art is the inspiration for a creative writing activity focused on having learners write from different perspectives. They analyze the image Yellow Rain Jacket, picking out details to help their storytelling. They use the details...
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Dig Those Descriptions
Students practice writing descriptions by researching various artifacts from ancient Egypt and writing captions for them. They read and discuss the Times article, King Tut, Museum Trailblazer, Begins Encore.
University of Chicago
Using Artifacts for Clues About Identity
Learn about the ancient Near East through a close examination of ancient artifacts. Lead your class into analysis by first observing an artifact as a class. Pupils can then work in pairs to analyze the other artifacts and compile a list...
John F. Kennedy Center
Baila! Latin Dance in the Spanish Classroom
One, two, three. One, two, three. Invite your language learners to practice the steps for researching and presenting information. Each small group has the task of explaining one Latin dance in full detail.
Curated OER
Half Man, Half Limping Rabbit
Read your class a folk tale from Romania then discuss it. As they listen they discover how the author sets the mood using English conventions such as foreshadowing, magical elements, and they look for descriptive language while looking...
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Understanding Immigration Through the Use of Triante Poetry
Third graders read a book about emigrating to America. They create and illustrate a triante poem using sensory words, depicting something they liked about the story.