Division of School Improvement - Model Curriculum Units

Students explain examples of sensory details and figurative language within the context of nonfiction to help understanding the text.

R3B Explain examples of sensory details and figurative language within the context of nonfiction text.

R1H Apply post-reading skills to comprehend text; question to clarify, reflect, analyze, draw conclusions, summarize, paraphrase.

Give examples of figurative language and sensory details with explanation of the literal meaning. Scoring guide provided.

1. Discuss how good writers use words to make pictures in their imagination. In the journal passages Lewis and Clark used sensory details and figurative language to allow readers to see, hear, smell, and taste to aid in comprehending the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Questions

for

Students

Have you ever read a book where you can picture the story in your imagination, hear things, smell things, taste things, and/or feel things?

Do you ever make pictures in your imagination when you are reading?

How do pictures in your imagination help you understand the text?

2. Read page 12 aloud from the book Lewis and Clark Explorers of the American West pausing to discuss whether the statement is using sensory details. Explain statements using sensory details appeal to our sense of hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, or touching. Write a sensory detail on the Sensory Detail T-Chart graphic organizer. Find a statement in the passage using figurative language. Point out the specific details that trigger the images and explain the literal meaning for the statement written under the heading figurative language.

Questions

for

Students

What pictures did you make in your imagination as I read?

What kinds of things would you see, smell, hear, taste, and touch if you were on an expedition with Lewis and Clark?

Why do sensory details help us become better readers?

Why do you think the author uses sensory details to help visualize the story?

3. Read additional passages aloud that use sensory details. Students write the detail under the heading on the chart under the sensory detail. Students write next to the statement the sense triggered as they heard the detail. Example from page 21 in Lewis and Clark, “with bleeding feet, the men made makeshift wagons and cleared eighteen miles of undergrowth.” “With bleeding feet” would be written under the heading sensory detail. Next to the statement write the sense of sight/touch because you could see the bloody feet and you could imagine the pain the men felt.

Idea

Explain to students sensory details help us become better readers because they help us picture the story in our imaginations. We can see, feel, smell, taste, and hear things. When we do this we understand the story better.

4. Choose other passages using figurative language. Students think/pair/share and write the statement under the heading of figurative language in the chart.

Questions

for

Students

What is figurative language?

Give examples of figurative language.

Strategy

Think, Pair, Share

Teacher poses a problem or asks an open-ended question to which there may be a variety of answers.

Teacher gives the students ‘think time’ and directs them to think about the question.

Following the ‘think time’ students turn to face their Learning Partner and work together, sharing ideas, discussing, clarifying and challenging.

The pair then shares their ideas with another pair, or with the whole class. It is important that students need to be able to share their partner’s ideas as well as their own.

5. Ask students to discuss the literal meaning of the figurative statement. Use the example from page 20 from the Lewis and Clark Explorers of the American West book, “on June second the expedition came to a fork in the river.” Write “a fork in the river” under the figurative language heading in the chart. Explain that the river divides into two different directions.

Questions

for

students

What is figurative language?

Give some examples of figurative language?

Why would an author use figurative language?

How do sensory details and figurative language help the reader understand the text?

What does the author mean when he writes?

1. “blanket the plains” (p.13)

Strategy

Give students experience with having many more examples using metaphors, idioms, and similes.

6. Sensory Detail: students select an illustration from the text and write a description of what they would see and hear if they were in the picture. Students choose one example of figurative language to write the literal meaning.