Name: Rachel Self Date: November 5th, 2017

Subject: English Grade Level: 11th Grade Honors

Topic: Revision / Descriptive Language Concepts Taught: Communication, Narrative
School: Harrisonburg High School Time Limit for Lessons: 30 Minutes

Standards of Learning:
11.6 The student will write in a variety of forms, with an emphasis on persuasion.
e) Adapt content, vocabulary, voice, and tone to audience, purpose, and situation.
f) Revise writing for clarity of content, accuracy and depth of information.

Learning Outcomes/Objectives:

Students will understand that…

 U1: Personal essays need descriptive language for readers to visualize settings and make
connections.
 U2: Descriptive language answers questions that distract the reader from deeper content.

Students will know…

 K1: How to identify areas in essays that require more descriptive language.
 K2: How to brainstorm sensory words and descriptive language.

Students will be able to…

 D1: List questions that can distract readers and answer them with descriptive language
(Remember).
 D2: Create sensory words or descriptive language (Create).
 D3: Assemble a sentence from several descriptive phrases and sensory words (Create).

Assessment: Methods of Evaluating Student Progress/Performance:

Lesson Goal Assessment

U1, K1, D1 Informal: Students will list questions that a
sentence creates with the teacher’s guidance.
This ‘We do’ activity will allow the teacher to
see how well the direct instruction was
understood.
U2, K2, D2, D3 Informal: Students will create descriptive
language in response to the questions they just
generated. This will be done on index cards,
which will be laid on the ground for a “Word
 Carpet” strategy. Students will assemble a
better description for the sentence using the
“Word Carpet” with a partner.
U2, K2, D1, D3 Formal: After the Word Carpet, students will
receive a small slip of paper with the previous
sentence on it. Using the language they just
engaged with, students will generate a question
the sentence raises and rewrite the sentence to
answer it with descriptive language. The
teacher will collect these slips to return with
feedback.

Guiding Questions:
 Why do we need to edit for descriptive language in a college essay?
 What makes descriptive language and sensory words so important to readers?

Student and Teacher Activities with Estimated Time Blocks:

Time Teacher Students

10 Minutes The teacher will give a Students will participate in an
PowerPoint presentation on interactive PowerPoint which
descriptive language, citing will require them to give
both the importance of it in questions and responses.
college essays and how to edit
for it. Students will participate
in short “We do” sections by
offering questions and
answers. This is also modeling
for the next activity.
4 Minutes The teacher will instruct Students will read another
students to think of three sentence and think of three
questions another sentence questions the “bland”
raises, similar to their sentence raises. They will
previous activity. The teacher answer their questions with
will instruct students to create descriptive or sensory phrases
three descriptive or sensory on three index cards to give to
phrases answering those the teacher when completed.
questions on three different
index cards. The teacher will
collect these cards to assemble
 into a “Word Carpet” for the
next activity.
10 Minutes The teacher will model how
the “Word Carpet” activity
works. The teacher will help
students line up and monitor
how the activity progresses,
leaving formative assessment
sheets on student desks for
when they return.
6 Minutes As the activity draws to a
close, the teacher will ask
students to write one of the
questions they used on the
formative assessment sheet.
The teacher will also instruct
them to use some of the
descriptive language phrases
they saw or created to
improve the sentence.
Differentiation:
Student Category
Small Group ELL Students
Students will follow the
teacher’s model, creating a
description of the base
sentence’s activity using the
“Word Carpet” to a partner.
They will get back in line to
switch positions, one as the
description creator and the
other as a listener. They will
return to their seats when
finished.
Students will return to their
seats when they finish to fill
out a formative assessment
closure. This will ask them to
write one of the questions
they thought of when creating
descriptive phrases, and then
to improve the base sentence
with their examples or their
classmate’s examples of
descriptive language. This
will come directly from the
Word Carpet activity, which
will provide them with
multitudes of examples.
Accommodations
This activity is simple enough in
that it only requires simple
sentence structure and some
phrase creation. Due to the high
amount of modeling from the
teacher and the examples
present by peers, sentence
 structure and description does
not need differentiation. I will
be around to answer questions
where they arise to ensure
clarity of understanding.

Materials Needed for the Lesson:

 Computer (with PowerPoint)
 Projector
 Index Cards
 Writing Utensils
 Formative Assessment (Printed and Cut)