Summer SAVY, Session 4 Day 2, “Tremendous Transformations in Writing” (3rd-4th)
Today we worked our brains, moved our bodies, and wrote a lot! (Your kid might need a hand massage this evening!) Our class is made up of such kind, creative, thoughtful, energetic children. In just two days, we have built a strong community of friends who are supportive of one another and respectful to their teachers.
This morning, we got right to work with some analytical writing! Students were asked to go deeper in their thinking about the book we read together yesterday–After the Fall–which tells the story of what happened to Humpty Dumpty after his fall. Students did a great job writing about how one element of the literary analysis wheel has an impact on another element of the wheel to generate meaning and purpose.
From there, we transformed into writer-detectives to use clues from the physical world around us to uncover rich material for our writing. We discussed the classic writerly advice to “show, don’t tell,” and then took a mini field trip into a lovely shaded green space on campus to practice “showing” through vivid description, painting a picture for our readers with words and images. I am so impressed by students’ willingness to share their writing and by their dedication to offer one another meaningful feedback and praise.
After a fun “feather-spoon” relay, we spent the afternoon focusing on how writers can use the five senses to enhance narrative development. We isolated each sense by closing our eyes (since vision tends to dominate the others) and experiencing the sounds of a storm, the smell of a lemon, the taste of a peppermint, the feel of a leaf, and finally the visual stimulation of a photograph, and then wrote with sensory details to try to recreate these experiences on the page. As a culminating exercise, we wrote scenes from the inspiration of a photograph and tried to use sensory details to evoke all five senses to really bring our stories to life. Another quotation from Sylvia Cassedy reminded us that we each have a unique perspective informed by our sensory experiences:
“…no two people experience the same thing the same way. Your senses, all together or one at a time, will show you a world that is not quite anyone else’s world. It is up to you to show that world to the rest of us, putting perceptions that are your very own into words that are your very own.”
At the end of our second day together, we began learning about character development. We played the game “Like Me” to explore the many similarities and differences among the members of our classroom community and then discussed how characters also have unique characteristics, just like real people. We finished up by sharing our favorite characters from books that we have read and discussing what makes these characters so compelling and memorable.
Below are some dinner table conversation starters:
- How do elements of the literary analysis wheel impact one another?
- How is a writer like a detective?
- How do you transform a telling statement into a showing paragraph?
- How are the five senses related to reading and writing stories?
- What makes a character memorable?
Tomorrow, we will delve even deeper into character development as we begin to build our own characters for our fictional narratives. I’m looking forward to another day together! I wish we had three more weeks together instead of three more days.
~ Abby Ashford-Grooms
