In 7th grade Language Arts class, we are practicing our descriptive writing and learning literary tools to help us become better descriptive writers. Today we talked about alliteration, personification, and imagery– three of the most powerful tools in literature. Alliteration is when you use repetitive consonant sounds in a sentence– for example, “Courtney cried while eating her crawfish.” The repeated consonant sound is the “c” sound. Personification is when you describe a non-living object as a human. For example, one student gave a fabulous example in today’s class: “The moon smiled at me.” Moons obviously can’t smile, silly! But when you use this creative tactic in writing, it helps make your story come more alive to the reader. When I hear this, I think of a giant silver moon looking directly at me with a big goofy grin. Lastly, we decided that imagery is simple when you breakdown the word. We talked about what an “image” is, and the students said that it is a picture…. So, imagery is when writers project an image in the reader’s mind with their words. How do you do this? … with a lot of details and fun adjectives. I hope to think the students are having fun with this type of writing. The creativity runs loose here, so stay tuned for later posts with our students’ brilliant work— the descriptive writing topic being “dinnertime”. . .

Oh yeah, and WHY is descriptive writing important??? After this short lesson, you tell me. . .