4.3 Writer's Workshop: Description

Preview- The Writing Process

Writing Goal: Descriptive Essay

To deepen your understanding of sense of place through description, you will develop a descriptive piece on a place that is or was meaningful to you. To capture the essence of this place, the feeling or mood you will need to use specific details to describe your topic.

Workshop Overview:  Don't forget that the Writer's Workshop consists of 2 parts.

1.  Writer's Notebook:  Open your writer's notebook template for Unit 4 and complete the 2 teacher-directed activities and 3 student-directed activities.  

2.  Major Writing Piece:  Descriptive Essay

1. Learn how to write a descriptive essay.
2. Look at an example.
3. Plan your own descriptive essay.
4. Write a first draft and get some feedback to revise your writing.
5. Revise your writing.
6. Submit your final draft. 

 Your writing will be assessed out of a six-point scale. 

Ideas and Content: (6/6)

Personal memories are used to reflect on a meaningful place creating a distinct mood and conveys the importance of the place to the reader.  

Organization and Supporting Details: (6/6)

The description is effectively organized in a highly logical fashion possibly using either spatial order, chronological order and order of importance. 

Word Choice: (6/6)

The piece used many specific adjectives and nouns and strong action verbs to include rich sensory details and create vivid images. 

Sentence Fluency: (6/6)

A wide variety of fluent sentences are used that vary in length and how they begin. 

Conventions: (6/6)

Work has been proofread and there are almost no errors in basic punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. 

Revision Mark (6/6)

 The student has very successfully revised the piece based on all feedback provided by the teacher. 

Descriptive Writing: What Is It?

What’s the big deal about writing descriptively? For one thing, it’s much more than page-filling fluff. Descriptive writing imprints images into the reader’s mind, making you feel as though you’re “right there.” It‘s all about engaging the five senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch to transport the reader and stir emotion. By choosing vivid details and colorful words, good writers bring objects, people, places, and events to life. Instead of merely telling you what they see, they use their words to show you.

Writers use this powerful method to make their pieces memorable—even brilliant—rather than dry and boring. In many ways, description is the most important kind of writing you can learn. Why? Because it supports other reasons for writing such as storytelling, informative reports, or persuasion.

from: https://writeshop.com/choosing-vocabulary-to-describe-a-place/

The following video explains how descriptive writing can also use strong verbs, alliteration, adjectives, similes.  

Writer's Notebook 4.1 Brainstorm

Open your writer's notebook for Unit 4 and complete 4.1: Where I'm From Brainstorm.

Writer's Notebook 4.2 Mentor Texts

MODEL PLACE DESCRIPTIONS

In each of the following paragraphs (the first written by a student, the rest by professional writers), the author uses precise descriptive details to evoke a distinctive mood as well as to convey a memorable picture. Notice the paragraphs aren't really stories, just an overall image that is created. Also notice the variety of ways that sentences are started.  Watch the video below for a quick review of mood.

Open your writer's notebook 4.2:  Mentor Texts and follow the instructions while rereading these texts carefully.

1) The Laundry Room

The windows at either end of the laundry room were open, but no breeze washed through to carry off the stale odors of fabric softener, detergent, and bleach. In the small ponds of soapy water that stained the concrete floor were stray balls of multicolored lint and fuzz. Along the left wall of the room stood ten rasping dryers, their round windows offering glimpses of jumping socks, underwear, and fatigues. Down the center of the room were a dozen washing machines, set back to back in two rows. Some were chugging like steamboats; others were whining and whistling and dribbling suds. Two stood forlorn and empty, their lids flung open, with crudely drawn signs that said "Broke!" A long shelf partially covered in blue paper ran the length of the wall, interrupted only by a locked door. Alone, at the far end of the shelf, sat one empty laundry basket and an open box of Tide. Above the shelf at the other end was a small bulletin board decorated with yellowed business cards and torn slips of paper: scrawled requests for rides, reward offers for lost dogs, and phone numbers without names or explanations. On and on the machines hummed and wheezed, gurgled and gushed, washed, rinsed, and spun.

2) Mabel's Lunch*

Mabel's Lunch stood along one wall of a wide room, once a pool hall, with the empty cue racks along the back side. Beneath the racks were wire-back chairs, one of them piled with magazines, and between every third or fourth chair a brass spittoon. Near the center of the room, revolving slowly as if the idle air was water, a large propeller fan suspended from the pressed tin ceiling. It made a humming sound, like a telephone pole, or an idle, throbbing locomotive, and although the switch cord vibrated it was cluttered with flies. At the back of the room, on the lunch side, an oblong square was cut in the wall and a large woman with a soft, round face peered through at us. After wiping her hands, she placed her heavy arms, as if they tired her, on the shelf.

* Adapted from a paragraph in The World in the Attic, by Wright Morris (Scribner's, 1949).

3) Subway Station*

Standing in the subway station, I began to appreciate the place--almost to enjoy it. First of all, I looked at the lighting: a row of meager light bulbs, unscreened, yellow, and coated with filth, stretched toward the black mouth of the tunnel, as though it were a bolt hole in an abandoned coal mine. Then I lingered, with zest, on the walls and ceilings: lavatory tiles which had been white about fifty years ago, and were now encrusted with soot, coated with the remains of a dirty liquid which might be either atmospheric humidity mingled with smog or the result of a perfunctory attempt to clean them with cold water; and, above them, gloomy vaulting from which dingy paint was peeling off like scabs from an old wound, sick black paint leaving a leprous white undersurface. Beneath my feet, the floor a nauseating dark brown with black stains upon it which might be stale oil or dry chewing gum or some worse defilement: it looked like the hallway of a condemned slum building. Then my eye traveled to the tracks, where two lines of glittering steel--the only positively clean objects in the whole place--ran out of darkness into darkness above an unspeakable mass of congealed oil, puddles of dubious liquid, and a mishmash of old cigarette packets, mutilated and filthy newspapers, and the debris that filtered down from the street above through a barred grating in the roof.

* Adapted from a paragraph in Talents and Geniuses, by Gilbert Highet (Oxford UP, 1957).

4) The Kitchen*

The kitchen held our lives together. My mother worked in it all day long, we ate in it almost all meals except the Passover seder, I did my homework and first writing at the kitchen table, and in winter I often had a bed made up for me on three kitchen chairs near the stove. On the wall just over the table hung a long horizontal mirror that sloped to a ship's prow at each end and was lined in cherry wood. It took up the whole wall, and drew every object in the kitchen to itself. The walls were a fiercely stippled whitewash, so often rewhitened by my father in slack seasons that the paint looked as if it had been squeezed and cracked into the walls. A large electric bulb hung down the center of the kitchen at the end of a chain that had been hooked into the ceiling; the old gas ring and key still jutted out of the wall like antlers. In the corner next to the toilet was the sink at which we washed, and the square tub in which my mother did our clothes. Above it, tacked to the shelf on which were pleasantly ranged square, blue-bordered white sugar and spice jars, hung calendars from the Public National Bank on Pitkin Avenue and the Minsker Progressive Branch of the Workmen's Circle; receipts for the payment of insurance premiums, and household bills on a spindle; two little boxes engraved with Hebrew letters. One of these was for the poor, the other to buy back the Land of Israel. Each spring a bearded little man would suddenly appear in our kitchen, salute us with a hurried Hebrew blessing, empty the boxes (sometimes with a sidelong look of disdain if they were not full), hurriedly bless us again for remembering our less fortunate Jewish brothers and sisters, and so take his departure until the next spring, after vainly trying to persuade my mother to take still another box. We did occasionally remember to drop coins in the boxes, but this was usually only on the dreaded morning of "midterms" and final examinations, because my mother thought it would bring me luck.

* Adapted from a paragraph in A Walker in the City, by Alfred Kazin (Harvest, 1969).

from: https://www.walden.org/documents/file/aw_lebow_2012.pdf

Writer's Notebook 4.3, 4.4, 4.5

Don't forget that for each unit you are to make a minimum of three entries that are your own.

Note: These entries do NOT necessarily need to be about personal narratives.

Again here are some possible sources of inspiration:

• point form
• drawings
• diagrams
• pictures
• explanations
• questions
• ideas 
• responses to readings
• parts of a draft
• clippings 
• poetry
• dreams and aspirations
• anything that you might use someday in a piece of writing

Or try a prompt or challenge from here.

Submit your writer's notebook (via template provided or pictures of pages out of a hand-written notebook or drop off in person.) to the dropbox "Writer's Notebook Unit One"

More on Descriptive Essay Writing

Planning- Favourite Place Assignment

Think about your favorite place, somewhere you love spending time. Maybe it’s a room in your house, a vacation destination, a summer cottage, a park where you love to walk, a store, your bed… or even the pitcher’s mound or goalie box where you play! Most importantly, think about a place that is meaningful to you.

You will be writing a detailed description of your favorite place that is at least one page long. You are writing this as a description, not an essay, so you do not need formal paragraphs with topic sentences, reasons, concluding sentences, etc. Just describe the place as if you are painting a picture of it, using imagery, sensory language, specific details, and mood. Close your eyes and imagine this place, or if possible spend some time there. What do you see, hear, smell, taste, and feel there? What specific details stand out? What feeling does the place give you? Start by opening the template below to plan your piece. 

Open and use the writing template to complete the step one: Prewriting

Save your file and upload it under the dropbox: Description Planning.

Once your teacher has marked and approved this you can go to the next step, writing your first draft.

Review your writing targets before you begin:

Ideas and Content: (6/6)

Personal memories are used to reflect on a meaningful place creating a distinct mood and conveys the importance of the place to the reader.  

Organization: (6/6)

The description is effectively organized in a highly logical fashion possibly using either spatial order, chronological order and order of importance. 

Word Choice: (6/6)

The piece used many specific adjectives and nouns and strong action verbs to include rich sensory details and create vivid images. 

Sentence Fluency: (6/6)

A wide variety of fluent sentences are used that vary in length and how they begin. 

Conventions: (6/6)

Work has been proofread and there are almost no errors in basic punctuation, capitalization, and spelling. 

Revision Mark (6/6)

 The student has very successfully revised the piece based on all feedback provided by the teacher. 

Drafting

Now that your planning has been approved by your teacher, you can begin your draft. Don't worry about getting things perfect. You will have a chance to get some feedback and work on editing before you submit your final draft.

Open your writing template for unit 4 again and continue with step two: drafting.  When you are finished your draft submit, save your work and submit it under the drop-box: Description Draft: Unit 4

Revising Mini-lesson: Vary Sentence Openings

It is very important when you are writing a series of sentences that they don't all sound the same. Sentences that all start the same way sound "elementary" and boring. To fix this, vary the way that you start your sentences. 

Here are some options:

1. Subject (who or what is doing something; examples-person's name, he, she, it or they)
2. Preposition (a word that shows position, time or location and is part of a phrase; examples -on, at, in, after, down, near... 
3.   Adverb (usually tells how, or when something happened and ends in -ly..... examples: unfortunately, eventually, suddenly
4.   -ing word  Example:  Screaming, the child fled from the malicious mad man. 
5. VSS (very short sentence-5 words or less) 
6. Clausal ( where,when, while, as, since, if, although)

Example: (Notice the underlined words) 

Revising: Personal Revision Task

Revision is where your writing is taken to the next step.

 Your teacher has given you feedback on one or more items to revise in your writing. You will find those items in the feedback section of your Descriptive Draft assignment. 

Return to your first draft to revise based on those comments and any other revisions you might want to make. This is an important part of the writing process and you will be marked on whether or not you were able to make the necessary revisions.

Your next step is to proofread and edit your piece.

Editing

Before you submit your final draft you need to edit your draft. 

Your teacher may have included some editing marks on your draft or you might get a parent or friend to proofread your paper. 

In any case you should check for the following: 

Capitalization

Organization: Paragraphs? Include a new paragraph when there is a new "scene".

Punctuation

Spelling

Publishing

Once you have:

• completed the mini-lesson and incorporated it into your writing
• revised your first draft based on feedback from your teacher
• edited your work for COPS 
• reviewed the writing targets to make sure you have included all necessary elements
• you are ready to submit your final draft!

Submit under the dropbox: Description Final Draft:  Unit 4.