Show Them, Don't Tell Them

by Kara Haas and Mary Toepfer

Haas, Kara & Mary Toepfer. (Spring/Summer 2004). Show Them, Don't Tell Them. Ohio Journal of English Language Arts, Volume 44, Number 2, 62-63. Used with permission of Ohio Journal of English Language Arts.

As English teachers, we're always looking for ways to encourage students to write more descriptively. Instead of telling us, "Brad was shy," students should be showing us that "When Brad spoke, he stared at an invisible point on the floor, shifting his weight from one hip to the other. His voice was a whisper trailing off into breathy silence." Telling students to make their writing more like the latter example simply isn't enough. We have learned that we need to model it for them; we need to show them. By listening to our classroom voices, you will find one way to help your students turn flat, telling language into passion-filled powerful words of art.

Begin the lesson with a writing prompt that is relevant to your students and the time of the academic year. For example, we begin our lesson with seniors in the first few weeks of school, so our prompt is, "Senior year should be..." Students write for five minutes, adding to this phrase in whatever way completes it for them. Of course, we get examples ranging from, "Senior year should be fun," "Senior year should be the best year of my life," and "Senior year should be one without homework." After giving students a chance to share their responses to the class, we then move on to the descriptive writing lesson. We will come back to this prompt at the end of this article.

Next we distribute the "[orc_internal_link /orc_documents/articles/haas_toepfer.doc|new|Show, Don't Tell! orc_link]" handout. We read aloud the teacher-generated examples at the top of the handout, and then, most importantly, we read excerpts from works of literature. We have had great success with the opening to Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak (1999). Not only do students see the qualities of good writing in Anderson's work, but many also end up wanting to read it, necessitating a waiting list in the high school library. Adapting this lesson to your own students' needs could simply mean using different works of literature from which you draw examples. We encourage the inclusion of nonfiction as well as fiction. You know your students best, so choose those books that you would like to see in their hands. We recommend reading directly from the work rather than from the handout. It validates even more the power of the written word. Also, this might be a good opportunity to point out the verbs, adjectives, and other powerful words that appear in the showing sentences that don't appear in the telling sentences. Or, this could be a good opportunity to introduce one of Harry Noden's (1999) brush strokes from Image Grammar (especially those of you who are on a block schedule).

Now it's time for your students to practice transforming the flat sentences into descriptive ones, using the models we provide at the bottom of the handout, Again, feel free to modify these according to the needs of your students. Also, we recommend letting students choose four or five out of the ten to rewrite. This adjustment allows for the lesson to fit neatly into a 50-minute class period as well as gives students the option to skip ones that they can't relate to as easily. just like in the opening, we encourage students to share their rewritten sentences in small groups and, later, with the entire class. This always proves to be fun with vivid language bouncing off the walls, desks, and floors of the room.

At this point, we have students return to their original prompt, "Senior year should be..." to apply what they learned in this lesson. Once they spend about five minutes revising their writing, we pass out slips of paper onto which they transfer their new descriptive piece. Students then post their strips onto the bulletin board to create a class found poem. Finally, a volunteer reads the poem aloud to the class as a way of validating the improved sentences. This poem serves as a place for revision and application of additional writing lessons throughout the school year. Students seem to learn quickly that "Senior year should be doing what I want" could be more descriptively written, "Senior year should be letting go of the swinging trapeze bar without the security of a safety net below."

References

Anderson, L. H. (1999). Speak. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.

Noden, H. (1999). Image grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Kara Haas teaches English at Aurora High School and graduates from Kent State University in August with her M.A. in curriculum and instruction.

Mary Toepfer, a former high school English teacher, is a doctoral student in the English education program, also at Kent.

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