Acting our Ages by Showing not Telling

Trying to write with vivid verbs and descriptive nouns can be difficult. How can we visualize what we write? The fifth-graders took on this challenge recently by trying to modify the sentence, "The person walked and talked." Changing the bold-faced words in this sentence to more vivid synonyms and variations, the kids wrote new sentences, trying to think of words that their peers could picture and act out. Then, we paraded around the room using the verbs the kids substituted for the word "walked." We pranced, skipped, hopped, crawled, and even wormed. Following this warm-up, the students took turns acting out the sentences they had written, giving classmates a chance to guess the sentence. Check out this video of someone acting out "The hippie jigged and whistled."