Show, Don't Tell

Teaching Pre K-8, Jan 2005 by Sullivan, Jane

Young writers grasp the idea of describing movement in this fun writing exercise

Show, don't tell - three words that have become the mantra of good writers. Yet, the concept is a difficult one for young writers to grasp. To help students, we teachers can demonstrate that when we put details such as movements, dialogue, thoughts and feelings into our writing, the words can create a picture on the page. Beginning with the topic "movements," I took a class of fourth graders through the first of what would become a series of writing lessons to help them understand the how-to of showing. Here's how we got started.

Creating word pictures

I began my first lesson by sharing a piece of writing from Lois Lowry's wonderful book, Autumn Street (Yearling Books, 1986, ISBN: 0-440-40344-8). It is the scene in which the main character catches a firefly in her hand. She later discovers that the insect died as she carried it into the house. In this excellent piece of writing, Lowry uses words like reach and release and soar to create that word picture. I then acted out the scene to show my students how much movement was built into the short paragraphs. They found other words in the piece and, following my example, demonstrated the movements inherent in those words.

Adding movement

When I felt that the students had grasped the idea of how movement "shows," we turned our sights to our own writing. On a transparency, I wrote the following sentence. My dog chewed my book apart while I watched.

"From just this sentence, do you think we see my dog doing that?" I asked.

The response was very predictable. Heads shook and a chorus of "No" filled the room.

We then talked about how words like go, play or look weren't specific enough to be considered real movement words.

"Let me show you how I can add lots of movement so that you can see my dog chewing up that book," I said. Underneath the sentence 1 wrote a paragraph that added words indicating actions.

I asked the students to find the movement words I had used to create my word picture. As volunteers called out each example, I underlined it in red. We all agreed that by adding movement words to our writing, we show our readers what is happening.

A logical progression

I then decided to write a second sentence on the overhead: Mary spilled her can of soda.

"This time," I said to my students, "I want you to help me change the sentence so that it shows us what happened."

Pretending I was Mary, I acted out the movements students told me they thought probably made the soda spill. When I felt their suggestions were vague or illogical, I asked them lots of questions.

"Where would the soda be?" I asked one student.

"On the table," was the answer.

"So, then how did it spill?" I challenged.

Students changed their minds and decided it was in her hand.

"Which hand? What did she do to make the soda spill? Then what happened?" I countered.

As a logical progression of movements or actions emerged, I recorded them on the transparency. The result was a new paragraph and once again, we found the movement words and underlined them in red.

It was now time for students to try out the strategy on their own. I showed them the following sentence on the overhead and then asked them to act it out.: The girl (or boy) fell off the skateboard

Next, I asked volunteers to come to the front of the classroom and mimic falling off a skateboard. Together we talked about each of the movements we saw as the volunteer acted out the sentence. Then I asked students to stretch out the sentence in writing, adding and underlining the movement words. Students worked diligently on the task.

Future lessons

The results really showed me that my students had begun to truly understand the role of movement words in writing. After witnessing the success of this wonderful activity, our future lessons focused on using other descriptive details such as dialogue, thoughts and feelings.

I am confident that these young writers will learn step-by-step how to show and not tell when writing their own stories. I hope this exercise works for you, too!

BY JANE SULLIVAN, Ed.D

Guest columnist Jane Sullivan is Professor Emeritus, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ.