How Do You Teach Descriptive Writing To Middle School Students?
Middle schoolers are a bit more work than elementary school students. If you want your students to become great descriptive writers, give them the chance to address topics that interest them. Start with something fun and light-hearted. For example, you can play with adjectives using the sentence “It was a dark night.” Ask your students for more adjectives, and you will get “It was a dark and stormy night.” Build the sentence one adjective at a time until you get something like “It was a dark, gloomy, stormy, murky, unpleasant, terrifying night.” Compare your final sentence with the sentence “it was night.” Ask your students what the adjectives tell you that you wouldn’t know otherwise. Ask which sentence is more artistic. Do a copy change. Find a funny, descriptive, and irreverent paragraph in a book the class is reading. Have the class change its meaning while keeping its structure. For example, if the paragraph says “It was the worst sound you could imagine. It was like a thousand ba
