This Lesson's Title:

Show What Your Mind Sees

using showing and telling together effectively

This lesson was created for WritingFix after being proposed by former NNWP Co-Directors
Kay Henjum and Liesel O'Hagan.

The ideal "mentor text" that can be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the chapter book The Twits by Roald Dahl. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, especially from chapter 16 of the book.

Click here to view this book at Amazon.com.

If you are a Washoe County teacher, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

"Show don't tell" is something we often say to student writers, but this writing activity asks writers to consider both showing and telling as they create a well-rounded paragraph.   Inspired by a telling sentence (with a linking verb), the writer will create a descriptive paragraph that contains four or five showing sentences and one telling sentence.  These showing sentences will contain action verbs and interesting adjectives, and the telling sentence might become the paragraph's introduction or conclusion.    Teachers: click here to read the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is organization; a purposefully-planned paragraph is the writer's objective.  The support trait in this assignment is sentence fluency; student writers are encouraged to use a variety of sentence lengths and sentence beginnings as they compose their purposeful paragraphs.