Students have been learning how authors use elaboration in their writing to add details to their stories. I've been trying to get students to understand that the words they use to write their essays should be creating pictures in the reader's mind; just like they create pictures in their mind when they are reading a book. Last week we used a short story by Cynthia Rylant called Slower Than the Rest to look closely at the detailed words she uses in this story so they could see what I mean when I say I want them to use more elaboration in their writing. The students did an activity with this story called "making tracks." They marked each descriptive word they found with a symbol to show what kind of detail the author was trying to show: sensory, physical, or emotional. They used symbols from a narrative detail sheet to make tracks on the story. I'm hoping this will lead them to use more descriptive words as they continue to develop their essay writing skills.
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