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Lesson Plan

Writing Like an Artist Paints using “Chasing Vermeer” by Blue Balliet by NNWP

Subject

English Language Arts (2005)

Grade Levels

Elementary, Intermediate, 4th Grade, 5th Grade, 6th Grade

Duration

One 45-minute period

Description

Students will compose a descriptive paragraph that focuses on some object moving quickly past a character who is standing still. Like Balliett does in Chasing Vermeer, the writer will use a healthy (both controlled) dose of artistic words, so the written scene comes across as painting-like. The goal is to make students more aware of the power of using words creatively in writing.

Website(s)

Northern Nevada Writing Project
The National Writing Project
Blue Balliett

Six-Trait Overview

The focus trait in this writing assignment is idea development; using interesting and specific details should be the number one goal of the writer. The support trait in this assignment is word choice; basing word choices on a theme (in this case: artistic words) is a marvelous way to show the power of word choices.

Author

Northern Nevada Writing Project (NNWP) Co-Director, Kim Cuevas

Materials

Copies of Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliet
Copies of Writing Like An Artist Paints Student Models
Copies of Writing Like An Artist Paints Idea Sheet (and/or an overhead of the document)
Copies of Writing Like An Artist Paints Pre-Writing Worksheet (one per student and/or an overhead of this document)
A painting by Vermeer for students to view at the start of class- this could be from a book, an Internet site, or a print from a museum

Writing Like an Artist Paints Idea sheet.doc

Writing Like an Artist Paints Pre-Writing Workshee

Writing Like an Artist Paints Student Models.pdf

Step-by-Step Procedure

Anticipatory Set: Have students view a painting by Vermeer, such as “View of Delft.” Visit: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/view_of_delft.html to view this painting. Ask students to list details they observe in the painting.

Introduce Blue Balliett's book to your students with this explanation: "This story is about a group of young friends trying to solve a mystery about real paintings by a real artist. The author makes special efforts to use lots of words in the story that would be the kind of words you would use to describe paintings and art. Why would she do that?" Ask for student volunteers to share their thoughts.
Read the first page of Chapter 3. Petra describes what she sees as the train passes her window. As she sees the people in the train whizzing by her window, she notices “colors sometimes left their shapes when things flashed by so fast.” Discuss with your students how the author uses color words and excellent adjectives to really create a picture in the reader's head. Also point out that because the people are on the train moving very fast, Petra only sees colors and shapes.
Tell students that Petra thinks like an artist to describe motion. They will be doing the same today.
Distribute the Writing Like an Artist Paints Student Models. In small groups, have your students read and respond to any or all of the student models that come with this lesson. The groups will certainly talk about the idea development and word choice , because of the discussion task found in the center of the page.
Next, explain to students that they will be writing about how something looks moving rapidly by a character. They will be using color and texture words to help their descriptions come alive. The handout, Writing Like and Artist Paints Idea sheet, will give them some good ideas and word choices, but they can certainly generate great ideas as a class or independently.
Distribute the Writing Like an Artist Paints Pre-Writing Worksheet. Allow students time to complete to help them organize their ideas before writing. You might want to have an overhead version of the graphic organizer below as well as copies for the individual student writers. You might want to use the overhead to create a class model of this writing before asking students to write independently.
Once students have completed the Pre-Writing worksheet, ask them to begin writing a rough draft of their story.

Closure: Ask for student volunteers to share what they have written so far.

Extension of Lesson

To promote response and revision to rough draft writing, attach Revision & Response Post-Its to your students' drafts. Make sure the students rank their use of the trait-specific skills on the Post-Its, which means they'll only have one "1" and one "5." Have them commit to ideas for revision based on their Post-It rankings. For more ideas on WritingFix's Revision & Response Post-Its, click here.

After students apply their revision ideas to their drafts and re-write neatly, require them to find an editor. If you've established a "Community of Editors" among your students, have each student exchange his/her paper with multiple peers. With yellow high-lighters in hand, each peer reads for and highlights suspected errors for just one item from the Editing Post Its.

When they are finished revising and have second drafts, invite your students to come back to this piece once more during an upcoming writer's workshop block. Their stories might become a longer story, a more detailed piece, or the beginning of a series of pieces about the story they started here. Students will probably enjoy creating an illustration for this story as they get ready to publish it for their portfolios.