A group of Senior Students works with me 2 mornings a week, during our school Spelling Time. Our goal in this 15 minute slot, is to explore Descriptive Writing and practise various techniques that will make our writing more vivid and alive. We have brainstormed how we already attempt to do this and each week we are adding a new strategy. We have discussed HYPERBOLE, and how the exaggeration is not meant to be taken literally, but rather to stress a point that the writer wants to make. An example we examined stated that the writer felt so elated and surreal on top of the mountain, that he felt he could touch heaven.
We are currently examining the Noun Group, and how knowing what features it contains, allows us to expand our own writing to make what we are describing move from the mundane into becoming ‘alive’ for the reader. Here is the example we worked on together.
The noun, ‘dog” becomes: His muddy, lonely, kelpie dog, with the black patch over his right eye, and a determination to endear himself to anyone foolish enough to stand still…………. Once we recognise that we can expand a simple noun with a POINTER (His), DESCRIBER (muddy), QUANTIFIER (lonely), CLASSIFIER (Kelpie), and the longest component, QUALIFIER (with the patch………...to stand still), our writing takes on a great deal of polish.
Regards,
Mandy Thompson, Literacy Coach.
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