The Art of Writing and Revision

Painting Pictures with Words: The Art of Sensory Imagery in Narrative Writing is a curriculum unit created for English Language Learners for fifth through eighth grade. The goal of the lesson is to improve students’ productive communications skills (speaking and writing).  The unit aligns with the Arizona English Language Proficiency standards. The unit consists of writing techniques for narrative writing and the use of precise language development. Standards three and ten from the Arizona English Language Proficiency standards align with the unit. The precise language development aspect is focused on concrete descriptive adjectives, specifically those associated with the five senses to be developed through multiple culturally-relevant lessons. Five lessons are created with several learning strategies. The first lesson provides students with a background of how sensory adjectives are used by exploring them in three different centers. The second lesson provides hands-on activities with centers that help students use physical objects to describe the five senses. The third lesson leads students into describing an illustration with modeled support. The fourth lesson gives students the opportunity to connect what they read and write a paragraph to complete the story with adjectives to describe the five senses. The fifth lesson gives students the opportunity to engage in completing a story by writing the conclusion using descriptive adjectives and adjective phrases. The assessment allows students to complete a project by completing what happens next in their story after they read a text. Students will be asked to submit their writing in a class book.

(Developed for Targeted ELD Block, grades 5-8; recommended for Targeted ELD Block, grades 5-8)