Kelly Collova

November 21, 2013

Lesson Plan: Adding Adjectives to Writing
Common Core State Standards: Writing Standards for K-5, Text Types and Purposes,
3 and 3b
Grade 4 #3 Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using
effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
#3b Use dialogue and description to develop experiences and events or show the
responses of characters to situations.
Objective: By the end of this lesson, students will be able to describe a picture in a
paragraph by using adjectives in order to make their writing more exciting.
Materials: Pictures, students writing notebooks, and SmartBoard
Procedure:
1. Lesson Introduction/Objective and Purpose:
a. Say something like, For the past few weeks that I have been in this in
class I have watched you write, revise, and edit your writing as well as your classmates
writing. I have read most of your writing pieces and I really enjoy them. As I have been
reading them I have noticed that you need more help with adding descriptive words into
your writing to make your writing more exciting. These descriptive words are called
adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe people, places, and things. Today we are
going to practice adding descriptive words in our writing.
2. Teach and Model (Modeling the thinking):
a. Say something like, Using adjectives is one way to make our writing
more interesting. Let me show you and example of writing that does not have any
adjectives and is not very interesting to read.
Nick is in the 4
th
grade. He woke up for school, ate breakfast, and got
dressed for school. Then, Nick walked to school with his brother. After school,
Nick walked back home from school and went to soccer practice. When he came
home from soccer practice, he ate dinner with his family. After dinner, he finished
his homework, watched a TV show, and went to bed.
Do you see how boring that paragraph is? It wasn't very exciting to read.
I can make this paragraph more exciting by adding adjectives and detail. Heres an
example of the paragraph with adjectives and detail.
Nick is a 4
th
grade student at Millstone River Elementary School. On
Monday morning, when Nick woke up for school he was tired after a long weekend.
He ate Cheerios for breakfast and changed into his favorite soft green shirt and blue
jeans. It was now 8:00 and time for Nick and his brother to walk to school. Nick
and his brother walked to school slowly on the sidewalk and cars sped past them.
On Nicks way home from school, he ran fast up the driveway of his house and into
the kitchen to grab a quick snack before soccer practice. After eating his snack,
Nick changed into his black soccer shorts and red short-sleeved soccer practice shirt.
When he returned home from practice his mother made Nicks favorite meal, which
is baked ziti. Nick enjoyed each hot and cheesy delicious bite of the baked ziti as it
melted in his mouth. After dinner, Nick finished what seemed like an endless
amount of homework, watched Sponge Bob, and then went to sleep in his warm bed.
Do you see how much more descriptive and how much more interesting this
paragraph was compared to the first paragraph? For example, notice how the second
paragraph stated that Nick was tired and described the clothes he was wearing. What I
like most about this second paragraph is when Nicks dinner is described. As I read that
part I could just picture what the baked ziti looked like and I was about to imagine how
delicious it was. The descriptions in this paragraph made the paragraph more exciting to
read and kept my attention. During editing our writing we are going to think of more
descriptive words to make our writing more interesting.
3. Guided Practice (Example 1: Extensive Teacher Help):
a. Lets look at another example. Lets say Im writing about my favorite
birthday present. I write:
I got a bike for my birthday.
That isnt very interesting. A lot of children get bikes for their birthdays
and I want my reader to know why my bike is my favorite and really awesome. Instead I
can use adjectives to describe the bike.
I got a hot pink bike with a flowery basket, a sparkly horn, and shiny
streamers for my birthday.
Now I am really showing my reader why my bike is so cool and using
adjectives helped me do it. In order to add adjectives into your writing, it is helpful to
keep four things in mind while you write and or edit your drafts.
1. Skim through your draft and stop at parts where you included people,
places, and things.
2. Ask yourself, What words could I use to describe this? And add them
to your draft. The best way to do this is trying to picture it in your mind.
3. Reread your new description and ask yourself, Is this the most
interesting way I can describe this?
4. Continue skimming and looking for places to add in more adjectives.
4. Example 2 (Less Teacher Help):
a. Say something like, Lets try another example. Im going to have you
help me edit this time by skimming through this draft and stopping at parts where people,
places, and things are included.
Katie sat in her bedroom as she did her homework. Her room was a
mess. There were clothes on the floor, shoes around the room, and her bed was not
made. Her mom continued to tell her to clean her room.
Say something like, Where can I use this step for this paragraph? Call
on a student.
Example: Her room was a mess.
That's right! That's a part of the paragraph where a place is included,
which is room. We can use an adjective to describe the word mess. That's right, you can
say, Her room was a big mess. But is this the most interesting way I can describe her
room? Not really. Can we think of something else? Call on a student. Thats great,
huge, enormous, or gigantic! I like gigantic. Im going to say, Her room was a
gigantic mess. That sounds a lot more interesting. Notice how that sentence is the same,
however we just dressed it up to sound great! I like how you thought of a few words to
describe the mess. Coming up with a few words gives us a few options to work with to
make that sentence sound more interesting. Call one or two more students to add
adjectives to other parts of this example.
5. Independent Practice (Example 3: No Teacher Help):
a. Now I want you to try adding adjectives in your writing. As you write
I want you to keep in mind the four steps I taught you in this lesson. I am going to hand
out a picture to each table. In your writing notebooks, I want you to write a paragraph
about the picture that is given to your table using adjectives. I am going to walk around
to see how you are doing. I will pass out a different picture to each table. Students are
to write a paragraph about the picture that was given to their table using adjectives.
6. Assessment (How will you know the lesson has been successful?)
a. I will be able to determine that the lesson was success if, after reading
each students paragraphs, students were able to incorporate adjectives into their
paragraph about the assigned picture given to their table.
Table 1:

Table 2:


Table 3:

Table 4:

Table 5:

Table 6: