We are now gaining some momentum in our Writer’s Workshop. Students have been enthusiastic with their independent, free-writing. Now we are beginning to introduce some mini-lessons that have students thinking of various skills or tools that they can incorporate into their writing. The first topic that we have looked at is descriptive writing using “show rather than tell”. Student’s engaged in acting out various emotions including: anger, sadness, joy… and then recorded what those emotions looked like. So, instead of telling the reader, “Bobby was angry.” students are now developing thoughts such as, “With jaw clenched firmly, Bobby stormed into the room and threw his backpack upon the floor.” To practice this skill, we will have students changing skeleton sentences into descriptive sentences with elaborative details. We will also have students brainstorming to come up with effective adjectives, adverbs and strong verbs to emphasize various emotions.