Crafting Writers Chapters 4-5

These chapters offered a great deal writing tools that I think can be very beneficial to emerging writers. In chapter 4, there were basically 5 main topics covered which included the five senses, show not tell, dialogue, sentence variety and word choice. I really liked the topic of incorporating the five senses. This is not something that I have ever thought about while writing and after reading this I have realized how much more enriching you can make a text by pulling from any of your senses and really adding some description. I think kids would enjoy this specific strategy as well. The "show not tell" aspect was also very helpful because many times kids do not show at all; they simply tell. This leads to uninteresting and dry writing. This section gave some great ideas and strategies for helping students really show what they are writing. So instead of writing "I was so sad" they will be showing by writing "tears were streaming down my face."
Chapter 5 was interesting as well because punctuation is very tricky to learn. At first, students will just place punctuation wherever they deem necessary. It is important for teachers to provide as many possible experiences with punctuation so students will build a background knowledge on when and where to use specific punctuation. I really liked the part where the teacher would have the students explore different books and look for punctuation and how it usesd within the sentences. This is a good idea and I think this would be much more engaging for the students than simply lecturing on a markerboard.