The descriptive essay is a genre of essay that asks the student to describe something—object, person, place, experience, emotion, situation, etc. (Purdue Writing Lab, 2018)
When encouraging learners to write descriptive essays it is crucial that educators find creative means to introduce the topic. Here are three activities teachers can implement in their classrooms when teaching descriptive essay writing:
1. Using the writing prompt “You're Walking Through a Spooky Forest” the teacher can construct a gallery and auditory walk where pictures are lined around the classroom and spooky music is being played. This will give students ideas as to what descriptive words they should use in their pieces as they are describing what they hear, and see and let us not forget the feeling of terror.
2. The writing prompt is “A Day at the Market”. For the introductory activity, students will dip their hands in a bag and feel the items which would consist of fruits or vegetables. This activity will lead both the teacher and students into a discussion describing what they felt and predicting what they perceive the items to be.
3. The teacher places an image in the center of the board and has students describe what they see or think is happening. They could act as subheadings where students collaboratively create an essay in groups of four. Each group will write a descriptive piece on their subheading as shown in the diagram below. Once completed all paragraph pieces will be combined to produce a final product.
These activities can be utilized at any grade level but must be broken down to a suitable level for them. Teachers should remember to inform students their descriptive pieces should be flooded with adverbs and adjectives.
Stock, Moon. “6,168 Spaceman Moon Stock Photos - Free & Royalty-Free Stock Photos from Dreamstime.” Dreamstime, 2018, www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/spaceman-moon.html. Accessed 19 Oct. 2024.
Purdue Writing Lab. “Descriptive Essays // Purdue Writing Lab.” Purdue Writing Lab, 2018, owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/descriptive_essays.html.
By Jaylene Peters
,
Teachers can use descriptive writing to supplement the writing process of students. It can be applied to the writing to learn process where they would be allowed to freely express their understanding of the concept in vivid detail to assess their understanding.
ReplyDeleteAny student no matter how young can write a decent piece of descriptive essay. A teacher can encourage students to write by presenting their own pieces and have it as a reference for them to use as a standard. Students love describing things they observe in their daily lives, especially when it comes to events that took place with over dramatization involved. That fifty foot fish they said they saw was really a three foot.
ReplyDelete