Showing Our Emotions

With the school year in full swing, our students are starting to really show off their writing skills.  As we in 5th grade dive into narrative writing, we’ve spent some time developing seed stories - stories which are small moments, which allow the author to be detailed and engaging.  A struggle many students have when reestablishing their narrative skills is remembering what word choice and tone can do to make a piece more engaging.  Many of us adults may remember being told to “show not tell” when writing, and today students practiced this very skill!

We turned our focus to emotion, comparing sentences like “Jane was sad” vs “Tears stung Jane’s eyes as they spilled over", or “Mark got angry” vs “Mark’s blood began to boil.”  Once we felt confident we could tell a “spicy” sentence from a “bland” one, we tried our hand at coming up with our own.

Students used fan and pick cards to draw emotions.  One student acted the emotion out to give another student a visual to base their spicy sentence off of.  Needless to say, some of us may be Oscar contenders this year!

Trying to look angry! =]

Showing sadness

Feeling nervous

Some spicy sentences we shared as a class

Tomorrow we’ll continue this exploration with emojis! Students are ready to try their hand at independently creating sentences, and will show their readers the emotion with careful word choice and tone.  

Teachers are always prepared with an example!

After all that practice, students should be able to come up with some awesome ideas!  I’m excited to see what we come up with!