Demo

1. Statement of the problem- I and my students are not detailed and specific with descriptive writing.
2. Hypothesis- Perhaps, I need to a new approach. "Science is the answer," said Linda Manly, my science team-mate. I was already incorporating science by having terrariums in class to relate to the novel The Giver so maybe this could work. I was discussing with her about using the terrariums as a writing tool to describe utopia, the terrarium, and the community in The Giver, and the real world. She suggested qualitative and quantitative observations. I loved it and it was cross-curricular.
3. Description of the procedures-First, I had my students place a terrarium on their desk. Next, I simply told them to describe it. After this initial description, I discussed qualitative and quantitative observations. Many of the students had prior knowledge about these observations from science but did not think to use them in English. The students then made a t-chart with observations on the two different observations. After this prewriting, they had a choice: use these new details to revise your initial piece or write an entirely new descriptive paragraph. For my demo, I will follow a similar process, but use objects in bags for the description item. Then, tie all of the items together to postcards from Carl Sandburg’s Home, Connemara, and have them write a collaborative descriptive paragraph to accompany the picture on a Carl Sandburg website. Connemara was Carl Sandburg's utopia so the two concepts of the novel and the terrarium and then the objects and Connemara are related through the utopian idea.
4. Evidence and Conclusion-My students enjoyed the specific details with their new observations. Most students focused more on their quantitative observations. Perhaps this was because they could not dive into their terrariums and touch and feel and smell it. It was a closed environment or utopia. Hopefully, by using the items in the bags for my demo, the writers will be able to use more qualitative observations. But, because the final writing piece will be a collaborative group project, I’m afraid that some of the quantitative observations will be cut. However, I think that having more is better. If you can’t use everything in your final piece, then you have stuff left over to use later. In the end though, I still think that this will strengthen descriptive writing with more precise details with qualitative and quantitative observations.