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4 Describe report what one observes or does

illustrate • report • represent

The Main Idea

Telling what we see and experience is a key piece of learning, so much so that students usually begin learning to write description at a fairly young age. Yet both narrative and informative writing require descriptive skills that must be honed and practiced. What’s more, the same tools of description apply whether a student is setting the scene for a story to take place, creating a piece of objective journalism, or describing a scientific event.

Underlying Skills:

 Observe closely. Description relies on details. Noticing, documenting, and creatively relating those details are elements that can separate a prosaic description from a memorable one. Younger students will benefit from writing exercises that focus on all five senses.

 Research. Whether a student is describing a scene set in another country or interviewing a firsthand witness of an account, accurately relating the truth in a way that conveys a full picture can require painstaking background research.

 Write clearly and succinctly. While descriptive text can certainly be complex, it requires specificity and clarity to communicate atmosphere and mood (or, in history or scientific disciplines, to communicate exactly what occurred in a process, test, or event).

Describe: report what one observes or does in order to capture and convey to others a process, impression, or a sequence of events in a narrative

Core Connections

 Describe how a particular story’s or drama’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution (RL3)

 Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively, causally) (RH5.6–8)

 Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters (W3b.6–8)

 Construct an explanation that includes qualitative or quantitative relationships between variables that describe phenomena (NGSS, MS-LS4–4)