I was sitting in a grade level meeting recently and realized that I was surrounded by other former filmmakers and actors. (This might sound unusual but remember I teach in Los Angeles).
Our goal was getting students to include sensory details in their writing and here are several ideas that might help you.
1. Have students act out an experience before writing about it. Staring at a blank page is hard by having that kinesthetic experience of having acted out a story will help you to write about it.
2. Visualization (also known as Method Acting)…you have to lead students through this. You don’t just say imagine you were there. You ask students to close their eyes and take them back through the whole experience. Imagine you’re in the location where you experienced kindness who’s there with you? What are they wearing? How do you feel when you see them? Take a moment and notice what’s around you. What do you hear? See? Is there are a particular smell to this location? It’s kind of like a mini-mediatation. It definitely helps.
3. Have students draw a picture and label it. Graphic organizers are en vogue for good reason. However, I think they’re of greatest value in helping students to revise their writing once they’ve gotten something down.
I’m working with first and second graders who can hardly read so staring at a bunch of words on a chart doesn’t really help jog their memories. I don’t think graphic organizers help too much with non-readers and English Language Learners in the prewriting phase of the writing process…with one exception. I am big fan of the ELD practicums rolled out in LAUSD that use color coded Thinking Maps to get English Language Learners to write sentences. This highly structured and scaffolded method allows even the lowest levels of English Language Learners to write sentences. However, the goal here is sentence formation and vocabulary, it’s not necessarily about authentic communication. Students are writing a sentence about steamboats, for example, to practice writing a sentence correctly, not because they want to write about steamboats. This practice is also important, don’t get me wrong, but many times we only “practice” and then throw out the idea of writing as communication and that’s what I don’t want you to do.
4. Talk about it. Also helpful and quick is to just have students talk about what they’re going to write before they write it. If they can speak it, they can write it even if the spelling isn’t right.
Thank you for this timely post. I am currently finishing up a course on literacy and one of the focal points is how to get children to WANT to write instead of just MAKING them write. By adding a physical element to the act of writing, children will see writing as an enjoyable exercise rather than a tedious chore. My main student-teaching placement is with a 1st grade classroom and I look forward to trying some of these techniques with the students.
Thank you Katherine for your comment. In regards to getting students to want to write, I would suggest that frequently the problem is 1) that students are not asked to write for any authentic reason (like because they have a story they want to tell) and 2) teachers don’t write because they want to…we do model reading for pleasure but very few teachers actually write just for fun and model that for students.
Good luck with your classes.
Using the five senses, even at such a young age I think is a great writing in-road. It’s something they all know and doesn’t seem like writing, to describe a smell or a taste. They get those things.
How interesting to make the distinction between reading for pleasure but not writing for pleasure…
@Lindsay,
I look forward to exploring your web site. Thanks for stopping by.
What isn’t so obvious to teachers who like write is that many teachers hate writing. It’s the reason why they often don’t model how to write and why very few assignments aren’t related to actual communication but tied to a prompt (i.e. write cuz I said so) starting as early as kindergarten.