Teaching the Language Arts: Week 4

Week 4: Adding Detail to Your Writing

This week Mentor Texts (Dorfman and Cappelli, 2007) discussed adding detail to writing.  At the beginning of the chapter, they quote Paula Bourque, “First, students must develop a habit of regularly reading their writing…changing behavior take a conscious effort, and we cannot change what we are not aware of.”  This could not be more true.  It took a large amount of self-awareness for me to start going back and reading over my academic writing as I went.  I still struggle to remember to go back and read my creative, more personal writing unless I am asked to for a class, or I find an old journal from years ago that I want to read through.

Reading this chapter made me realize that not only would I have had a hard time teaching the concept of adding detail, but I really struggle with it myself.  However, after reading the chapter, even I was able to write a fairly detailed (3rd or 4th grade level) small moments story (See my Published Works page)!  Chapter 4 gives five different examples of strategies that can be used to teach the adding of details.

1. Adding details through questioning

   1. The students will, in the end, learn how to ask themselves questions as they write in order to add more detail.

2. Using illustrations to add details

   1. Writing about illustrations, or writing with a “picture in their head”

3. Building content through showing not telling

   1. Showing emotions without specifically stating the emotion that is being felt by the characters.

4. Building content with dialogue

   1. Students can learn to selectively use dialogue when it will help his more detail to the story. The challenge is not writing too much dialogue.

5. Examining details for a good fit

   1. This strategy focuses more on using new, not as common transitional phrases, and also in taking out any unnecessary or unfitting details at the end.

As we have talked about in my “teaching the language arts” class, I struggle with writing in textbooks.  I like the look, smell, and feel of a new textbook and I always worry that I will make it feel less new if I write or highlight.  However, my goal for the next week is to practice highlighting and writing in this textbook.  It is full of so much great information, and I want to be able to easily find that information when I reference this book for my classroom writing unit.  I will let you know how it goes when I post my weekly post next week (week 5).

Sources:

Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2007). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children’s literature, K-6. Portland, Me.: Stenhouse.