Descriptive Writing Support #withSchoolAi #EdChat #ELA

One of the things that was always tough for me was to get students to expand their descriptive writing skills. High school writers were content to call think big or pretty and leave it at that. Getting them to see the beauty of word choice and what it can mean to a story can be a tough task. I have employed lots of different tactics over the years, but one of the last lessons on descriptive writing utilized SchoolAI to help students practice the idea of using imagery to get the reader to "see" what they were writing. With the launch of SchoolAI 2.0, I have updated the Imagery Workshop Space to create something I think is pretty awesome. 

There is a story from an episode of "Tales from the Darkside" that tells the story of a scary monster called The Grither that hates to have its name repeated and will come for anyone that dares to speak it. I took this episode and created a prose version of the story and shared it with students. There were descriptions in the story, but ones that could be elevated by another writer. The goal was to have students read the story, identify descriptive language, rewrite a portion providing more detail, and revising that piece of writing to make it stronger. The way to see if the writing was helping the reader to "see" their scene was to use the Image Generator PowerUp to create what they wrote! 

The Image Generator PowerUp allows the student to see what they wrote and make changes based on what they wished was in the image that they were not clear about on the first draft. Getting students to see their descriptive writing is a great way to help them connect their writing and imagery. Here is what was created based on my first draft,  

The Grither first attempt

After seeing this image, I was prompted to make an edits to my description to get it closer to what I want readers to see. 

Revised Grither description 

You can notice the difference in the images. It is not drastic, but enough that it was closer aligned to what I envisioned when writing the description. 

This Space can be launched in class and the teacher can use the teacher dashboard to observe all of the student inputs and how they are enhancing their descriptive writing skills. The students can save the images and connect them with their description and add that to their portfolio to show their growth. 

I think this is an awesome way to support students who are working on descriptive writing. Students can share their images with others, see how they are similar and different and take full ownership of their writing process. 

If you want to check out this Space, you can find it here and launch it with your students. If you want to learn more about SchoolAI supporting you and your students, consider joining the SchoolAI Community by becoming a SchoolAI Champion!