Sensory Language mini-lesson
Teaching Engagement Lesson Plan
Sensory Language
Common Core Standards:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.7.3d Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.
Student Goals:
Students will use sensory language to describe five different scenarios.
Students will be able to discuss why sensory language is helpful to writing.
Rational:
Sensory language is an element of writing that students should adequately learn to apply to their available skills. Through this lesson the students will not only discuss or learn about the characteristics of sensory language but they will also begin to apply it to their writing knowledge. The goal at the end of this lesson is for students to be able to properly apply sensory language details to improve their writing quality.
Sensory language is made up of details describing reactions from the five senses; touch, hear, taste, smell and see. The inclusion of these details helps the writer to bring the written work to life and to help the reader to fully connect to the piece. Student’s ability to write sensory details will not only improve their writing but their critical analysis of text skills or connections to stories as well. Sensory details add an element to their writing that forces them to think a little below the surface and to produce quality written work.
We have chosen an activity where the students will have to engage their senses through demonstrations. With each aspect of this activity students will have to rely predominantly on one of the five senses at a time. This will mean that the other sense will be disengaged as much as possible. We wanted to create a lesson that will apply to all types of learners, including the ones who learn through writing, moving or seeing. We wanted this lesson to applicable and easy for all students to engage with. This activity will give students the opportunity to discover what it means to write about and describe the reactions that each of their senses have. The students can then take this activity and apply it to their writing in the future.
This lesson will provide students a chance to get to know their own senses and then figure out how to describe them to others. The ability to do this will help the student to create believable stories, plots and settings to apply to their writing. This is a great lesson that will keeps students engaged and lets them have a little fun in the process. We hope that student take away that it is easy to include sensory language as long as they rely on their own senses and their skills to describe them.
Sensory Language Activity:
Students will be given the opportunity to explore all five of their senses and then write about their experience.
The teacher will bring five different objects to test the sensory skills of the students. The teacher will inform students they will be describing their experience through writing after the activity.
1) Touch- Blindfold or with eyes closed, the students will one by one and have place their hand in a covered box to feel a squishy ball type object.
2) Smell- Blindfold or with closed eyes the students and have them smell a cucumber melon candle or a vanilla cookie candle.
3) Hearing- Teacher will play a recording of a guinea pig squeak.
4) Taste- Blindfold or instruct students to close their eyes. The students will then be given a sour piece of candy to eat.
5) Sight- Show a picture of an old farmhouse.
Formative Assessment:
Have students write down each experience in detail.
**Make sure to tell students they are not to write what they thought the object or sound was…they must describe the object using their senses**
Through this activity, students are forced to rely on their senses to write their final description.
Examples to show the students:
From Maya Angelou’s I know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“[Mrs. Flowers'] skin was a rich black that would have peeled like a plum if snagged, but then no one would have thought of getting close enough to Mrs. Flowers to ruffle her dress, let alone snag her skin.”
“I looked around the room that I had never in my wildest fantasies imagined I would see. Browned photographs leered or threatened from the walls and the white, freshly done curtains pushed against themselves and against the wind.”
“They were flat round wafers, slightly browned on the edges and butter-yellow in the center”
Then the teacher will facilitate a class discussion based on the following questions:
How did this activity make you feel?
How was it relying on your senses one by one to convey what you thought?
How do you think this activity will help you with sensory language?
Building on the Lesson:
I think this could be a great lesson prolonged over an entire week. Focusing on one sense at a time, then writing more seriously could be really beneficial to students’ skills in writing in detail. Also, having examples of sensory language available for students to review could really help scaffold students’ ability to use sensory language.
Formative Assessment:
The formative assessment will be casual and will take place during the mini-lesson itself. The teacher will walk around listening to student’s observations and then observing their use of their descriptions applies to their writing. The teacher can use this information to decide if the teacher needs to continue reaffirming the information or they can move on.
Final Summative Assessment
A final assessment for this mini lesson would be having the students create a short story using all the senses they just learned about. This can occur with the objects that they used or allow them to come up with their own. This will take place toward the end of the mini-lesson and will tell the teacher if the students grasped the concepts of applying sensory language to their writing.
Challenges this lesson may face:
Not all students are going to be keen on being blindfolded or shutting their eyes. You have to remember that every student has a different background and although you may think this is a fun activity for all you need to consider every students background before you attempt this lesson. Also, you need to keep in mind all food allergies for the taste aspect of your lesson.
Annotated Bibliography
"English Language Arts Standards." Common Core State Standards Initiative. National Governors Association, n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. <http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy>.
The Common Core Standards are necessary for almost any lesson. These are the guidelines we will have as teachers. Thus being said, Katie and I used two common core standards to address our mini-lesson.
Straker, David. "Sensory Language." Changing Minds. Syque Limited, 2013. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
<http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/persuasive/sensory_langu age.htm>.
This website was a good resource in finding our more about sensory language. It list all five senses and how to use them in writing. It is a good resource to jog your memory on what sensory language is and how powerful it can be to use it.
Maas, David F. "Consciousness Of Projection In Composition And Literature." ETC: A Review Of General Semantics 59.4 (2002): 429. Education Research Complete. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.\
This is an article about teaching sensory language for composition. The author talks about his personal experience as teacher and student. The author focuses on activities and the necessity to include sensory language within the students writing. Furthermore the author devotes most of the article to a discussion about the students personal projection of their senses and experiences onto their work.
Hillocks, Jr., George. "The Effects Of Observational Activities On Student Writing." Research In The Teaching Of English 13.1 (1979): 23-35. Education Research Complete. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
This is an article about the effects of observational activities on the students writing, meaning that observational/hands on activities improve the student’s ability to experience more of their senses that they can apply to their writing. This article discusses the use of sensory stimuli within in activities to help students to incorporate their experiences within the activity to their writing.
Sensory Language
Common Core Standards:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.7.3d Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events.
Student Goals:
Students will use sensory language to describe five different scenarios.
Students will be able to discuss why sensory language is helpful to writing.
Rational:
Sensory language is an element of writing that students should adequately learn to apply to their available skills. Through this lesson the students will not only discuss or learn about the characteristics of sensory language but they will also begin to apply it to their writing knowledge. The goal at the end of this lesson is for students to be able to properly apply sensory language details to improve their writing quality.
Sensory language is made up of details describing reactions from the five senses; touch, hear, taste, smell and see. The inclusion of these details helps the writer to bring the written work to life and to help the reader to fully connect to the piece. Student’s ability to write sensory details will not only improve their writing but their critical analysis of text skills or connections to stories as well. Sensory details add an element to their writing that forces them to think a little below the surface and to produce quality written work.
We have chosen an activity where the students will have to engage their senses through demonstrations. With each aspect of this activity students will have to rely predominantly on one of the five senses at a time. This will mean that the other sense will be disengaged as much as possible. We wanted to create a lesson that will apply to all types of learners, including the ones who learn through writing, moving or seeing. We wanted this lesson to applicable and easy for all students to engage with. This activity will give students the opportunity to discover what it means to write about and describe the reactions that each of their senses have. The students can then take this activity and apply it to their writing in the future.
This lesson will provide students a chance to get to know their own senses and then figure out how to describe them to others. The ability to do this will help the student to create believable stories, plots and settings to apply to their writing. This is a great lesson that will keeps students engaged and lets them have a little fun in the process. We hope that student take away that it is easy to include sensory language as long as they rely on their own senses and their skills to describe them.
Sensory Language Activity:
Students will be given the opportunity to explore all five of their senses and then write about their experience.
The teacher will bring five different objects to test the sensory skills of the students. The teacher will inform students they will be describing their experience through writing after the activity.
1) Touch- Blindfold or with eyes closed, the students will one by one and have place their hand in a covered box to feel a squishy ball type object.
2) Smell- Blindfold or with closed eyes the students and have them smell a cucumber melon candle or a vanilla cookie candle.
3) Hearing- Teacher will play a recording of a guinea pig squeak.
4) Taste- Blindfold or instruct students to close their eyes. The students will then be given a sour piece of candy to eat.
5) Sight- Show a picture of an old farmhouse.
Formative Assessment:
Have students write down each experience in detail.
**Make sure to tell students they are not to write what they thought the object or sound was…they must describe the object using their senses**
Through this activity, students are forced to rely on their senses to write their final description.
Examples to show the students:
From Maya Angelou’s I know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“[Mrs. Flowers'] skin was a rich black that would have peeled like a plum if snagged, but then no one would have thought of getting close enough to Mrs. Flowers to ruffle her dress, let alone snag her skin.”
“I looked around the room that I had never in my wildest fantasies imagined I would see. Browned photographs leered or threatened from the walls and the white, freshly done curtains pushed against themselves and against the wind.”
“They were flat round wafers, slightly browned on the edges and butter-yellow in the center”
Then the teacher will facilitate a class discussion based on the following questions:
How did this activity make you feel?
How was it relying on your senses one by one to convey what you thought?
How do you think this activity will help you with sensory language?
Building on the Lesson:
I think this could be a great lesson prolonged over an entire week. Focusing on one sense at a time, then writing more seriously could be really beneficial to students’ skills in writing in detail. Also, having examples of sensory language available for students to review could really help scaffold students’ ability to use sensory language.
Formative Assessment:
The formative assessment will be casual and will take place during the mini-lesson itself. The teacher will walk around listening to student’s observations and then observing their use of their descriptions applies to their writing. The teacher can use this information to decide if the teacher needs to continue reaffirming the information or they can move on.
Final Summative Assessment
A final assessment for this mini lesson would be having the students create a short story using all the senses they just learned about. This can occur with the objects that they used or allow them to come up with their own. This will take place toward the end of the mini-lesson and will tell the teacher if the students grasped the concepts of applying sensory language to their writing.
Challenges this lesson may face:
Not all students are going to be keen on being blindfolded or shutting their eyes. You have to remember that every student has a different background and although you may think this is a fun activity for all you need to consider every students background before you attempt this lesson. Also, you need to keep in mind all food allergies for the taste aspect of your lesson.
Annotated Bibliography
"English Language Arts Standards." Common Core State Standards Initiative. National Governors Association, n.d. Web. 16 Feb. 2014. <http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy>.
The Common Core Standards are necessary for almost any lesson. These are the guidelines we will have as teachers. Thus being said, Katie and I used two common core standards to address our mini-lesson.
Straker, David. "Sensory Language." Changing Minds. Syque Limited, 2013. Web. 17 Feb. 2014.
<http://changingminds.org/techniques/language/persuasive/sensory_langu age.htm>.
This website was a good resource in finding our more about sensory language. It list all five senses and how to use them in writing. It is a good resource to jog your memory on what sensory language is and how powerful it can be to use it.
Maas, David F. "Consciousness Of Projection In Composition And Literature." ETC: A Review Of General Semantics 59.4 (2002): 429. Education Research Complete. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.\
This is an article about teaching sensory language for composition. The author talks about his personal experience as teacher and student. The author focuses on activities and the necessity to include sensory language within the students writing. Furthermore the author devotes most of the article to a discussion about the students personal projection of their senses and experiences onto their work.
Hillocks, Jr., George. "The Effects Of Observational Activities On Student Writing." Research In The Teaching Of English 13.1 (1979): 23-35. Education Research Complete. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
This is an article about the effects of observational activities on the students writing, meaning that observational/hands on activities improve the student’s ability to experience more of their senses that they can apply to their writing. This article discusses the use of sensory stimuli within in activities to help students to incorporate their experiences within the activity to their writing.