Describing a Moment with Fourth Grade

A moment can feel like it goes by really quickly.  But if you begin to describe that moment, you realize that a small moment is filled with a lot of actions and feelings. For our first writing project in fourth grade, we started by writing Explode the Moment pieces. An Explode the Moment piece pushes students to take a small moment and describe it in detail. They express what they see, hear, feel, taste, smell, touch and feel inside.

We started by writing our first draft. 

Then came the edits and the second draft. 

And then the edits and the third draft. 

After a while, the students began to realize that writing is a process. Beautiful language started to  develop as they consistently wrote and rewrote, digging deeper into the moment. Attention is paid to sensory language that paints a picture in the readers mind.

 

Finally, the fourth graders are able to publish their pieces, and voila, beautiful moments in our fourth graders lives. Stick around to see how our fourth graders continue to grow and develop as they transfer the techniques developed in their Explode the Moment pieces to longer and more detailed types of writing.