After reading Lauren's Blog Entry #9, I found myself captivated by her use of descriptive language. Throughout Lauren's blog, she clearly "paints a picture" of her own understanding of this genre by using descriptive language such as exhilarating, influential, joyful and illuminating. As Lauren shared, I found Kayli and Kerrigan's presentation to be fascinating as it compelled me to consider how I would put my new understanding of descriptive writing into practice.
Within Lauren's blog, she focuses on Tompkins (2012) concept of sensory images, including the five-senses. I appreciated that my classmate used an example of how a simple sentence such as, "The cat sat eating their food," could be crafted into a descriptive sentence. For instance, Lauren changed this sentence into, "The fluffy cat sat quietly eating their fresh and juicy seafood platter, as the sun shined through the window." Within Lauren's example, her use of the five-senses is crystal clear and so, I was able to visualize the cat she describes. I believe her example highlights the importance of descriptive writing.
Similar to Lauren, I do not have a classroom of my own. However, my classmate has inspired me to reflect on the various ways I plan to teach my students descriptive writing. Specifically, I enjoyed reading Lauren's explanation of how her site-based educator used the story,
In November, to teach students about the five-senses. After reading this section of her blog, I was reminded of Tompkins'
five-sense cluster. Tompkins (2012) describes that in five-sense clusters, "students create spider web diagrams with five sections, to focus on sensory words and images" (p. 145). When reflecting on how I would put this instructional tool into practice, I believe I would first encourage learners to bring in a picture or object from home. Then, using the five-sense cluster, I would guide students in brainstorming ways to describe their image/object. I believe this mini-lesson would be a great way to spark students excitement.
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| Example of a Wordless Picture Book |
Furthermore, as Lauren mentioned, I believe I would also use mentor texts to support my students' understanding of the descriptive genre. In my classroom, I can envision myself using Tompkins' (2012) concept of
wordless picture books to guide students through inventing "...a text to accompany the picture as they 'read' these books" (p. 149). When reflecting on the way I would incorporate
wordless picture books, I am reminded of the "listing attributes" activity our classmates led us through. In this lesson, we were encouraged to choose an illustration from a mentor text and then, describe the image using attributes. As a future educator, I would love to use wordless picture books to guide students through a similar activity. But, to take this lesson one step further, I would encourage learners to share the sentence they created with the class and after, allow students to work together in order to identify the attributes used in their classmates' writing.
As I write this, I notice that I could go on and on about the ways I would incorporate descriptive writing into my classroom. Therefore, I want to thank Lauren for her thoughtful Blog Entry #9. My classmate clearly illustrated her understanding of this genre and in return, encouraged me to reflect on my own future classroom. Fantastic job!
Yes! I hope Lauren had a chance to read this entry. It is so clear how her thinking about the elements of description influenced your own re-examination of the readings as well as the experiences that you had in the Genre Expert Workshop.
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