Descriptive writing is an essential skill to develop in upper elementary and middle school. Being able to describe people, places, and situations is needed as children build communication and writing skills. The ability to fully describe someone or something is a necessity for many other reading and writing skills, such as characterization, literary elements (setting, etc.), and many more standards.
In order to develop these skills, students will need to have a foundation of parts of speech. We’re talking the basics, here: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc.
If you’re a writing teacher, you have probably uttered the words, “you need to add more detail,” more than a few times! These exercises will help your students build their descriptive writing skills in fun ways so you no longer have to say that phrase!
Describe the classroom
Start with something simple… your classroom! Students can begin with simple adjectives that describe the nouns around them. Choose different items or people in your classroom. You could even start with yourself!
Depending on your classroom atmosphere, have students raise their hands or yell out different adjectives that describe their teacher (you!). Write them on the board and have fun with it!
To take it a step further, make it a game! You could have teams of students compete to come up with the most (accurate) adjectives that describe someone or something. Whichever team has the most adjectives in a set amount of time will win that round!
If you do not want to break your students into teams, you could have the whole class compete against itself! Have a set time, around 30 seconds, for example, and have them describe a pre-determined noun that they see. Count how many adjectives they could come up with! For the next round, they will try to beat their score, or number of adjectives, from the last round.
Descriptive writing with post-its
Another way to describe the room would be with post-it notes! Give each student several of them and have them quietly walk around the room. They will pick a few objects to describe, then return to their seats.
This activity would get them up and moving, but hopefully in an organized manner! When they are finished (set a timer), go around the room and read the post-it notes! Have students discuss whether or not they would add different/more adjectives to the items.
Descriptive writing gallery walk
(For any of you wondering why I took a picture of a crying toddler, I didn’t; this is my husband as a tot… lol!)
Hang up pictures around the room and attach it to a piece of large easel paper. Students or groups will have a different colored marker and walk around the room, viewing each picture.
They will add descriptive words to the pictures with their markers. After doing so, they can move on to the next one.
I found this 50 pack set of markers at Staples and they work wonderfully! It allows each student to have their own color. I did find them on Amazon for an even cheaper price!
Here’s the tricky part: they cannot repeat or copy what anyone before them has written down! When they start coming around to the last pictures in the cycle, they will have to think harder about words that describe the picture or scene.
To make it even harder, you can put words on the “banned” list. These words would be simple words, such as “nice,” “good,” “sad,” or other words that could be substituted with more descriptive words.
For a free list of different words to substitute or more information, check out my blog post about revision and editing!
When finished with the gallery walk, see if the students can make a descriptive paragraph about each picture using the descriptions that were written. Ask them if the words they used to describe each picture paint an accurate vision of what it shows.
The picture above, for example, could have a paragraph that goes something like this: A little boy looks very upset. His eyebrows are crinkled, his eyes are closed, and his mouth is wide open! It appears he may be crying loudly and that he is stressed out. He has brown hair and tan skin, which makes sense as he is outside on a sunny day by a pool. The grass is quite green around him.
Descriptive “scoot” game
Similar to the gallery walk, provide a variety of pictures or scenes and lay them around the room. Give students a piece of paper to record their information on.
Students will have 30 seconds to a minute at each task card. They will describe the pictures or scenes that they see. You could give students any descriptive pictures that you want, with as many stations as you want. I would advise having only one student at each station, though, for a scoot game!
If you’re interested in some descriptive task cards, check mine out! They come in an interactive Google Drive/digital version, as well!
Descriptive writing sentence stations
In groups, students will start at a station that has a simple sentence. They will need to add a word to it. For example:
“The dog sits,” may change to “The brown dog sits.”
The students would then go to the next station, where a previous group already added a word. Now, for example, the second group may need to add an adverb.
“The brown dog sits,” turns to “The brown dog sits patiently.”
And so on. This could also be done for stories; students could create a story together as they move from station-to-station, adding more descriptive words and sentences to the story.
Pictionary
Pictionary is always a fun and hilarious game! With descriptive writing, students would really have to know how to describe a scene to their peer who cannot see the picture.
Click here to join the Chlover Club and get access to the photos I use to teach descriptive writing!
In teams (or as a class), students will have to describe a scene to their classmate. This classmate will draw the scene as they perceive it from their classmates. This will require kids to be very descriptive in order to get the picture correct!
Another way to do this is to have students write down a scene, setting, or event; the student who is drawing will have to draw the scene as his or her classmates read it.
Story Cards
Descriptive writing can be fun with story cards! Students will write a story without and adjectives and adverbs… it will be everyone else’s job to add the descriptive words!
The teacher should model this, first; you could write a story without the descriptive words but leave spaces for them. Have the students fill the missing words in as a class. Once the students have enough practice, they can write their own stories and have their friends fill them in.
If you want to be more specific, give students a theme. Use the same story a few times, but each time have the class or groups fill in the words with different types of adjectives and adverbs. For example, the first round could be to make the story exciting and happy! The next round could be the same story, but students must make it dreary or scary.
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Let me know if you have any success with these! Do you have any other fun ways to teach descriptive writing basics? Tell me below in the comments!