How to Teach Young Students to Write Descriptive Paragraphs
A free sample of the resource, Informational Descriptive Writing: Lesson Plans for the Early Grades can be downloaded at the end of this post.
Teaching young writers to compose interesting sentences can be challenging. After many years in the classroom, I discovered a method to teach students to compose descriptive paragraphs that is not only successful but also motivating to young authors. The method includes four steps to success.
Four Steps to Successful Descriptive Writing
Success Step #1: Teach students to identify nouns.
Students need to be able to identify nouns so that adjectives can be added to their writing. Teaching nouns also solidifies the understanding that every sentence must have a subject. The subject is always a noun.
Success Step #2: Teach students to identify adjectives.
Once students can identify nouns, they are then ready to attach adjectives to the nouns, which of course, adds interesting details to their compositions.
Success Step #3: Guide students to create a labelled drawing.
With the knowledge of what nouns and adjectives are, the young authors are ready to create a highly effective prewriting plan for their descriptive paragraphs. What is this prewriting plan, you ask? It’s a labelled drawing. A labelled drawing becomes a writing tool that makes composing interesting sentences, and ultimately descriptive paragraphs, easier.
Success Step #4: Provide students with a paragraph template.
Since many of our young writers have not yet mastered composing paragraphs following the traditional format, providing them with a template eliminates the organization aspect of this writing task.
Their labelled drawing becomes the word bank from which they choose words to compose sentences for their descriptive paragraph. Both the template and the labelled drawing help your reluctant writers feel less overwhelmed with the writing assignment. You will witness pride in the faces of these students when they successfully compose a descriptive paragraph.
A free sample of the resource is available to download. It includes lessons to teach nouns and adjectives.
Download a free sample of the resource, Informational Descriptive Writing: Lesson Plans for the Early Grades.
For the complete resource with lesson plans for all four steps to success, visit
