Magnifying a Moment!

Second graders are currently working on a narrative writing unit. We've been working on picking a small moment story to write about. Second grade is a big year of growth for writing! At this point, they're still writing short sentences, but by the end of the year they're able to write in full paragraphs, across many pages.

One of the first things we are working on to help extend our writing is writing with details to magnify our small moment story. To do this, we used real magnifying glasses to help us! We read a mentor text called Owl Moon by: Jane Yolen. This story is full of descriptive words that really help the reader picture their story in their mind, and that is exactly what we're trying to accomplish as writers!

Next, I split students up into groups. They were each given a piece of paper to divide into 4 squares. At each table, I put a pile of special and unique rocks. With their group, the students had to use their 5 senses to write descriptive words about each rock. Some rocks were smooth, some bumpy, some colored, some sparkly, some thin and some heavy. The objective was to come up with as many words as possible to describe each rock. Students used magnifying glasses to really get a closer look!

We ended the lesson by sharing out the descriptive words they came up with. Students were able to add even more words to their list, and by the end students had a long list of descriptions for each rock. We talked about how important it is to keep this in mind when writing our own stories, because zooming into one detail will help your reader better understand.