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Name Laurie Shapiro Grade Level: Second

Writing Mini-Lesson Template

Mini Lesson Topic Descriptive word choice- amazing adjectives

Teaching point: students will notice how other authors have used adjectives to create
feelings, describe a person, place, or thing, and bring a moment to life. Writers/ authors
employ adjectives to create meaning within their text, which impacts the entire piece.
SOL: 2.12 The student will write stories, letters, and simple explanations.
a) Generate ideas before writing.
c) Expand writing to include descriptive detail.
d) Revise writing for clarity
Mentor text: Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andreae and David Wojtowycz, smartboard.
Connection: In our last writer's workshop, we learned about adjectives and how they impact the
 Tell them what you meaning of a text. To do this, we looked at the mentor text, Rumble in the Jungle, and
taught in the analyzed how the author's use of adjectives to create images in our minds of the animals
previous lesson. that we would see in a forest. Then, we practed using adjectives in senteces with the
 How does this idea guided practice game called "silly hat". Finally, students worked independently to begin
connect? their short stories, which will include adjectives. They began prewriting for this story by
listing the setting, and the nouns within thtis setting that they will describe. They began
listing adjectives to describe their nouns. Today's lesson will be an extension of what we did
in our last writer's workshop, as students will continue practicing identifying adjectives in
mentor texts, and using them in their own descriptive writing.
"Today, we are going to review what we learned last class about adjectives, and continue
Explicit Instruction: practicing identifying them in our Rumble in the Jungle book.
 Tell them what you Last class, we practice visualizing the animals that the authors describe in their story. We
will teach today. discussed why we had these visuals, and what specific words the author used to describe
 Show them the animals. "
examples of how "Today, we are going to look over the chart that we made while reading, and discuss the
others use the adjectives that we noticed and wrote down. We are going to notice the different types of
technique(s). adjectives that the author used to desribe the animals"
Reread a few sections of the story .
For example: "The boa onstrictor's a slippery snake"- pg. 12. Refer back to the chart, where
"slippery" is the adjective used to describe the snake. Explain that this is called a descriptive
adjective because it desribes the type of snake. A descriptive adjective is one that explains
things such as size, shape, color, or type. Type relates to something that you can sense with
one of your five senses, which includes smell, sight, taste, touch, or sound. What type of
five sense does the word slippery relate to? The answer is sight and touch, because you can
see and feel something that is slippery. This word helps us to visualize the snake because
you can imagin what it might be like to see a slippery snake, and what it might be like to
feel it!
Another example is the following: "Hello, I'm a big happy hippo"- pg. 14. Repeat the process
detailed above to describe the type of adjectives used here.
Continue on in this way, noting the various types of adjectives that were identified in the
previous lesson. This includes words such as big, happy, ravenous, strong, baggy, gorgeous,
black, hairy, and gray. Use each word to explain that adjectives can be used to describe size,
color, and types of a noun.
Let's try identifying the types of adjectives in our own writing. In the story, the authors used
Guided Practice: various types of adjectives to describe the animals living in a particular environment- the
 Engage them in jungle! The authors particularly use descriptive adjectives to explain the types of animals
practicing you’re living there. Now, we are going to look back at the adjectives that you came up with
your and/or yesterday during independent practice and decide what kind of descriptive words you
other(s). chose.
Model this process with the exemplar story on the white board. Project the filled in
prewriting paper for the example story. "For example, in my prewriting, I decided that I
wanted to write about creatures in the ocean! One of the creatures that I am writing about
is a star fish. The following are adjectives that I worte: five-points, pink, and bumpy. Now, I
can realize that I have a descriptive adjectives that describe the number of points, the color,
and the texture." Have students get out their pre-writing papers and see if they can identify
the types of adjectives that they wrote. If they feel that they can add more now that they
have learned about the specific types of adjectives, then give them a moment to do so.
Then, have them turn and share with a partner. Come back together as a whole group to
share a few of the adjectives and explainations for their types as a class.
Independent Practice: Today and any time you write, you want to make sure your readers can picture your story
 Remind students in their mind. We can do this by purposely includes different descriptive adjectives to
how the teaching describe the nouns we write about.
point can be used in Have the students write their adjectives story. This story will include a page describing the
independent environment, and a page for each person, place, or thing that can be found in that
writing. environment.
 Link mini-lesson and Model how to write the first page describing the environment.
writing lives. "In my prewriting page, I wrote that the ocean is my environment. When I think about the
ocean, I think of the crashing blue waves, the salty water, and the sand on the ocean floor.
As my introduction, I might write something like this (model this writing on the smart
board): There are blue waves crashing, There is tons of salty water. Deep down below,
there is sand on the floor. There are creatures swimming all around…. let's explore the
Model how to use the descriptions from the prewrite to describe the people, places, and
" I wrote that the star fish had five-points, was pink, and bumpy. I can turn that into a
sentence by writing the following (model this writing on the smart board): The pink starfish
is quiet happy, living on its rock. It sticks to the surface, its five points spread a part. It's
great to be a bumpy star living in the sea."
The students will write their stories, using this example, and mentor text as a reference.
Groups Wrap Up: "Today we learned about the types of adjectives that writers and authors use to describe
 Restate the teaching people, places, and things. Can anyone tell me what types of adjectives we discussed
point. today?" Allow students an opportunity to share their answers, and examples of them.
 Ask: Did you try
what was taught? "You all did a wonderful job of identifying the types of adjectives that writers use, and
Did it work for you? applying them to their story."
How will it affect
your future writing? Wrap up the lesson by discussing how adjectives help clarify and describe writing, and how
we can continue to use adjectives to enhance our own writing.

Self Check:

I modeled writing for the students.

I used a mentor text.

I used excerpts from the mentor texts.

I provided details as to what I was doing for each stage of the lesson.

I provided details as to what the students were doing for each stage of the lesson.