Literacy: writing 12.05.20

Our writing lesson this week is inspired by Really Weird Removals.com. In Monday’s chapter there was an excellent description of a troll, full of describing words:

The troll is dressed in what look like rabbit skins. He has a huge head and huge feet and hands, and his skin is all leathery, with a greenish-yellowish hue. He has a few straggly yellow hairs on the top of his head and pale, nearly white eyes. He must be at least seven feet tall. I can smell him: a mouldy, revolting stench that seems to come from the depth of a bog.

Draw a picture of what you think the troll looks like based on the author’s description.

Next, look at the description of the troll and find all the adjectives and descriptive phrases.

The words I have underlined in red show where the author has added adjectives. The words underlined in green show what the author is describing. The author has described what the troll is wearing, their size, what their skin, hair and eyes looks like and has described how they smell.

Let’s add to this description. Have a look at this picture of the troll from the front cover of the book.

How would you describe his ears, nose, teeth and nails? Write one sentence to add to the description of the troll (don’t describe anything that has already been mentioned). Here is mine:

Next, I want you to have a go at writing your own description of a monster. It could be the troll you drew, or you could choose another monster to describe. Focus on writing a description of the monster not on telling a story about them. Think about:

What size are they? What does their skin look like? What kind of hair do they have? What do their eyes, nose, mouth, and ears look like? How do they move? What are they wearing?

Here are my describing words for a kelpie:

Then I had a go at writing my description. I used my describing words to help me. I aimed to write 4-5 sentences, just like the description of the troll in Really Weird Removals.com.

What have I done well? What could I have done better?

My steps to success were:

Draw or find a picture to describe Think of 10 – 12 describing words Write 4 – 5 sentences to describe my monster, using the describing words

In class we often talk about what tools we can use if we are struggling. Some of the tools we use to help us with writing are:

Discuss our ideas before we start writing. Record our ideas on an ipad then write while listening to our recording. (This means the

children can focus on getting their ideas out first while not worrying about all the secretarial skills of writing at the same time)

Have a word bank of words we may find tricky to spell but want to include – ask someone at home for help with this or use a dictionary. This should be the describing words you thought of to describe your monster.

Use a visual prompt to help us come up with ideas (see below). Have access to a list of common words so we can check our spelling ourselves (see below). Look at an example for ideas (see my example above).

When you are finished and if you would like to share it with the class, take a picture or type it into a word document and then upload to Teams so we can all see it.