Lesson length: 60 mins Resources Key Elaborations

Lesson 4: The power of vocabulary choice Whiteboard and markers Understand that the meaning of
Teaching & Learning Cycle: Modelling and deconstruction, and also some Joint and sentences can be enriched through
individual construction Setting image cards (there the use of noungroups/phrases
Learning intentions is already a large variety of and verb groups/phrases and
The aim of this lesson is to get students thinking critically about the vocabulary choices these in the class materials) prepositional phrases (ACELA1493 -
that they make in their writing. They will also relate this back to narratives by looking Scootle )
at how this can be used and the effect it has on the audience. Student workbooks Incorporate new vocabulary from a
By the end of the lesson students will know what the 5 senses are when describing in range of sources into students’ own
writing. Students will understand that descriptive vocabulary can be used in writing to *Jack will use his iPad for texts including vocabulary
make it more engaging for the audience. Students will explore and examine vocabulary the activities involving encountered in research (ACELA1498 -
choices and engage in activities that involve them in the process of using descriptive writing* Scootle )
vocabulary. Discuss how language is used to
describe the settings in texts, and
Teaching strategies explore how the settings shape the
Lesson introduction (10 min): events and influence the mood of
To start the lesson we will recap on what was covered in the last lesson and the main the narrative (ACELT1599 - Scootle )
concepts we focussed on. The main points from last week which should be called upon
(through guided questioning) are that we need to start our writing with a bang to General capabilities:
engage the audience, and the way we do this is too start with a snippet of the problem - Literacy
and then go back to the start of the story (give the audience a teaser into the story). - Critical and creative thinking
Questioning will be used to encourage students to recall this for themselves. Students - Personal and social capability
will then be asked if they remember something that we said made writing interesting
back in lesson 1 (students may take a while to get there but questioning should be used
again to scaffold this recalling). The information which we are trying to draw out here
is that vocabulary can be used to engage the reader.
When students have recalled this, introduce the topic of this lesson (vocabulary
choices). Have a discussion with the students about what types of vocabulary they think
engages an audience.
We will then talk about how, when we are reading, we want to see very descriptive
vocabulary choices so the audience can imagine and visualise what you are describing.
Lesson body (35 min):
The first activity this lesson will be taking sentences with hardly any descriptive
language and adding in the descriptive vocabulary. To start, we will do one as a whole
class. On the board I will write the sentence ‘the cat sat on the mat’. I will use this
example to work through this with the students looking at where we can put more
describing words to be able to help someone imagine it better.
An example of how this sentence might be changed to be more descriptive could be
‘The fat grey cat slouched sleepily on the old, shaggy, blue mat’. For the example I will
have more input in the construction of the sentence but then they will do one
individually with less guidance, so that the students can play around with it a bit more.
The way that the activity will be scaffolded more or the first one is that I will put prompts
onto the board to get students to think of what types of words they could put and
where. For example, on the board I will write the sentence and then underneath I will
write a the same sentence with blanks where they need to think of a different word.
For example:
For each of these blanks we will do a quick brainstorm on the board to think of a range
of different words they could use in there. For example:

After we have done one with the scaffolding, students will then break away and follow
this process themselves for 1 more sentence. This sentence will be ‘the sun set over the
hills’. Students will be given 2 minutes to change this sentence, then come back to the
groups and some people can share.
For the next activity, I will introduce the 5 different senses that can help students to be
more descriptive in their writing (smells like, looks like, sounds like, feels like, tastes
like). When you have introduced this make sure it is clear to students that they wouldn’t
usually use all of these in one sentence but over a few sentences. This concept should
help the students to imagine what type of things they can describe and what other
senses the audience might need to know about.
For an example of this I will hold up a picture of a scene and the students have to tell
me what they might see, smell, hear, feel and taste (this can be recorded on a table on
the board).
Once the students have practiced using descriptive language students will break away
into groups of two.
This activity is working on the students using high levels of description so that audiences
can really start to imagine what they are describing. For this the students will get a
photo of a setting each. The students will take turns in describing their own photo (that
the other person hasn’t seen) looking at the 5 senses. The other person then has to
guess what kind of setting it is and explain what they imagine from that. The describer
will then reveal the picture and the guesser will say if that is similar to what they
imagined and how the person could have added some more description to describe it
better. Each student will describe one or two different pictures to each other, focussing
on the 5 senses and descriptive language. It should be highlighted that the more detail
the better.
Lesson end (10 min):
At the end of the lesson, after packing up, the students will share their experiences with
the class. What did you find? How did the descriptions help you imagine?
When we have discussed I will ask for some take away points from the lesson. This will
be checking to see if students have understood. (These may be that we can use our
different senses to describe, when we describe something we should use lots of
descriptive language, or that vocabulary choices can make writing very interesting).