Show Don't Tell

I am trying to teach my students to understand the writing strategy of "show don't tell." There are often students who use too much dialog to tell a story. They hate to edit their words because all those quotation marks and dialog look so GOOD and FILL UP the page.

I appreciate the Two Writing Teachers blog because there are so many great ideas for writing lessons whether it's fiction, nonfiction, grammar, or poetry. I have often referred to the blog in addition to my writing book collection.

I wrote four sentences on the board, beginning with I am angry. The challenge was for the children to write a few sentences that SHOWED someone was angry using descriptions of gestures, facial expressions, words or thoughts.

One child said, "Oh yeah, like that time you pretended to be angry and stormed into the room and we wrote about it? Here is my picture - do you remember this too?"

I laughed when I saw the picture. I forgot the lesson I had taught in the fall with the Personal Narrative unit. I decided to change the challenge to I am sad.

After this lesson we shared some work. One student said my mouth was "an upside down banana" and another said "she looked like she had just missed the buzzer beater during March Madness."