Style is one of the most important elements of writing—but how can you teach something that’s so personal, so impossible to quantify? It can feel like trying to explain Yosemite to someone who’s never seen a mountain or forest. Or describing how to perfect banana bread to someone without a sense of taste.
That’s where Blackbird & Company’s Tools of Style comes in. These guides provide training wheels to practice using rhetorical devices—the tricks writers use to tell their stories well. And newly supplementing our Tools of Style guides are the new downloadable Printshop resources, namely The Writing Mentor.
By using The Writing Mentor in conjunction with Tools of Style, young writers learn to ride the proverbial bike in scaffolded increments. They start by watching someone else ride a bike, then get on it themselves with a parent’s steadying hands holding them upright, and pedal until suddenly they’re riding under their own power.
Perhaps the best guidance we can give our student writers, is to challenge them to write like a painter.
Imagery is vivid and descriptive—figurative—language that helps readers see pictures in their mind while reading. Take a look at Print Shop on the website, where you can download this Writing Mentor lesson, for a limited time, for FREE. Your students will learn through a masterful example of imagery. They will practice by sprinkling imagery into scaffolded sentences. And, ultimately, get creative by crafting five imagery-filled examples that. they will then shape one into a singular poem.
If you can make your reader feel like they’re there, if you give them the means to smell freshly-cut grass and taste the tang of frozen yogurt on their tongue, you have accomplished something great indeed. Get into imagery—use The Writing Mentor!
~Claire S.