Learning How to Add Detail to Our Writing

Today Ms. Lirenman read us the story A House for a Hermit Crab by Eric Carle.

If you're not familiar with the story the little hermit crab finds himself a new house and as he makes his way through the water his house becomes more interesting as different animals start to make a home for themselves on his house.  

So what does this have to do with writing?  Well once the story was over we talked about what happened and how the house changed from a regular house, to a much more interesting house just by adding details.

Then Ms. Lirenman drew a house.

As you can see it was a very regular house with very little detail. We wanted it to have more deatils so slowly, one by one we each came up to the house and added one detail. Detail after detail, student after student and in the end our house looked like this.

But, what does this have to do with writing?  Ms. Lirenman loves what we are writing so far but for many of us our writing is very simple. It's missing DETAILS!  After we read A House for a Hermit Crab, then drew our own house with details, we now better understand what it means to add more details.  Hopefully you'll see this improvement in our writing too.