Entry #10: Why is Descriptive Writing Powerful?

Throughout the past three weeks, I have continued to observe and read the work of my peers in order to gain new insights and perspectives about creative writing. This has been very beneficial for me because I have had the opportunity to see what other students are choosing to focus on for their own personal blogs and what pieces of information have stuck out to them while learning about creative writing in a classroom environment. I have found that as a result, I am thinking about topics that I hadn't previously considered and am forming new ideas in my mind about how to approach certain topics and genres of writing.

After reading the blogs of my peers for this week's post, I was drawn to a particular post about the power of descriptive writing. This post stuck out to me because of a previous workshop presentation given by one of my peers about descriptive writing. I really enjoyed this presentation because it gave me a lot of insight about why descriptive writing is important in the classroom along with how a teacher might teach descriptive writing to students. I thought the activities that I completed were very fun and engaging, and I took a lot of information away with me. For this reason, I have decided to bless, address, and press Denise's blog about the power of descriptive writing.

Bless

I would like to begin by blessing Denise's blog for several reasons. Firstly, I thought Denise did a wonderful job at incorporating word choice into her blog. I liked how Denise personalized her blog by including her own prior experiences with descriptive writing and why she had challenges when including it into her writing. Secondly, I thought Denise did a wonderful job at including her readings to prove her argument which was the importance of descriptive language. Denise referenced Tompkins to talk about the five techniques she could use to make her own improvements to descriptive writing. Lastly, Denise incorporated visuals to aid in her writing and help the reader understand her point.

Address
In Denise's blog, she includes pictures of books that can be used to teach descriptive writing. Denise mentions each book and how they could be used as mentor texts in a classroom. I would like to know how Denise would use these particular books in a classroom setting in order to teach descriptive writing, and I am curious why Denise decided to talk about these books specifically. I really enjoyed how she included specific examples of mentor texts for descriptive writing, so I would love to learn more about how Denise might incorporate these texts in a classroom or if she has any personal connections to these texts.

Hicks (2013) states, "What is compelling about presentations as a digital writing tool is that so many other forms of media and composition can come into play". I thought Denise did a great job at using digital writing to establish the purpose of her blog which was to talk about the importance of descriptive writing.

References

Hicks, T. (2013).  Crafting digital writing.  Portsmouth, NH:  Heinemann.

Tompkins, G. E.  (2019).  Teaching writing:  Balancing process and product (7^th ed.).  UpperSaddle River, NJ:  Merrill.