Describing the Setting

In my twenty years of being a classroom teacher there are a few students who stick out in my mind as being truly gifted writers. I had this third grade student about ten years ago at Adams School who had a natural ability to pull the reader into his story. He knew, without being taught, how to make a setting feel real by engaging the reader’s senses. He just put himself right where his story was happening and wrote the sort of details that remind you of a poet or an artist. Unfortunately, most students don’t come equipped with this gift!

Here, then, is my first lesson on teaching kids to describe a setting.

Goal: To get students to understand how to use sensory details to describe a setting.

Reminder to students: The three key elements in a story are:

1. Character
2. Setting
3. Plot

In order for a reader to fully engage with the characters in a story there needs to be a strong sense of place and time.

Step One: Picture the Setting

I asked the kids to name a place they would like to describe. Someone suggested a garden and everyone liked the idea. I asked them to close their eyes and think of a garden that they knew well and liked.
Picture this garden in your mind. What do you see? Look all over. Look to your left. What do you see? Look straight in front of you. What do you see? Look to your right.
Now take a deep breath. Breathe in the smells. What do you smell? What do the smells remind you of? Listen. Be very quiet and listen to all the sounds. Now take off your shoes. What do you feel under your feet? Touch something in the garden. How does it feel? Does it remind you of something? Okay, open your eyes now!

Step Two: Table It!

On the board I drew a table, which I cannot seem to reproduce here! It had 4 columns and 5 rows and each column was headed as follows:

Sights Sounds Smells Feel

Me: So tell me what you saw in your garden?
Student: Flowers.
Me:         I want to make a picture of those flowers in my mind. Can you tell me more about these flowers.
Student:  They were roses.
Me:        Can you tell me some details about the roses so I can picture them?
Student: They were pink roses.
Me:         Good. I wrote Pink roses in the table. What else did you see?

Each time a student gave me a vague response I pressed them to be as specific as possible. In the table under “sights” we had pink roses, small white daisies, plump, red tomatoes, a big, oak tree.
For sounds we had buzzing bees, the water fountain, and chirping birds.
Under “smells” they came up with: roses smelled like perfume, the smell of herbs
And what could they feel? Soft grass, smooth petals, dirt

Step Three: Time to Write

Since this was the first formal lesson on teaching kids to write about a setting, the writing part was a directed activity intended to model strong sentences.

Let’s look at the table and write sentences about the things we listed. We need to make sentences that are strong. Do not start with “I see ...”, “I hear … “, “I smell … “, or “I feel … “! First we need a topic sentence. Who has a good idea for one?

Student A: My grandparents have a beautiful garden.

Me: Wonderful. Anyone else with an idea?

Student B:  I love the garden because it is peaceful.

A few other kids shared ideas. I went with Student A’s sentence, and wrote it on the board.

Me: Now we need sentences that give details. Who would like to make a sentence about the pink roses? 

Student C:  The first thing that you see are the pink roses.

Me: That’s a very good sentence. Where exactly would you see the roses?

After some prompting we decided that the roses were around a fountain.

I went through the items listed in the table and encouraged the students to think up creative sentences. For example, rather than “I hear bees buzzing” I asked them to think about where you would see the bees and what they would be doing. We ended up with the following paragraph:

My grandparents have a beautiful garden. The first thing you see are pink roses around a fountain. They give off a sweet perfume. Pretty white daisies grow near the tomato plants. Bees buzz in and out of the flowers. A hummingbird beats its wings and makes a whirring sound. The soft grass tickles my feet as I walk to the tomato plant to pick a juicy, red tomato. I lean against the big oak tree and the bark feels rough on my skin. I love this graden.

The final part of the lesson is having the kids copy down the paragraph they had generated. If time permits they could illustrate this setting.