Descriptivo

Jan shared the book "Fat Frogs on a Skinny Log" by Sara Riches (Scholastic, 2000)
with a group of children from a grade 1/2. (7-8 year olds)
After each page was readthe students discussed the illustrations. When answering
the question the students were asked to consider the characters' appearances and
actions. They were encouraged tofind words to explain their answer rather than use
hand gestures.
A child was asked to use the whiteboard to
draw the frog from the story. Students were
then asked tothink of the words they had
previously used to describe the frog. Jan
recorded these words around the picture of
the frog on the whiteboard. Words included:
skinny,slimy, thin, little, green, cheeky,
happy, slippery, yellow.
The students were asked to write a
description about a frog using as many of
the words from the whiteboardas they
could. The purpose of this activity was to
later include such a descriptive passage in a story about a frog.
After a short writing time the students cametogether to share their drafts. Discussion
included questions about the descriptive words they used in their writing, e g. 'How
big was your frog? Which word tells us this?','You could join your sentences together,
how could you do this?'.
After the discussion the students returned to work on
their drafts.

Some examples have beenincluded. Jodie was a frog. Jodie
was a green frog. He
had warts on his back
and was a very small
frog. He was always
smiley and relaxing on
a lily pad. He was 10 cm
long.Green is cheeky. Green
sits and he is lazy. Green is funny. Green is little.
Green is very silly. Green is very, very happy.

Green is slimy. Green is a tree frog. 1