Composition Interventions

Once a student has practiced generating, focusing, and developing ideas, he is ready to add details to his work. This part of the writing process focuses on making the writing interesting for readers by adding juicy details, or by augmenting the description to make it appeal to the five senses. This page includes intervention strategies that you can use to support your students in this area. As you read, consider which of these interventions best aligns with your student's strengths and needs in the whole-learner domains.

Explicit Instruction

If you are intervening to support your student's ability to add details, you should start by explicitly teaching the skill. This sounds like:

• Explain the Skill/Concept. Define adding details, and explain the activity. ("Today we will be adding details to our topic. When we add details, we make the experience come alive for the reader by showing him the experience and making him feel like he is right there in the middle of it, rather than just telling him about it by relating factual information. To do this, we write about the experience using all five of our senses: hearing, feeling, tasting, touching, and smelling." "Today, we'll practice adding details to our work..")
• Model Skill with Examples. Think aloud about how you would add details to a sentence. ("When I add a detail to my writing, I want to think about how it shows the reader my experience. For example, here I have written the sentence, 'My grandmother's bread is delicious.' I want to add details to this sentence to make the reader smell and taste the bread. I could add more specific words to show the reader why this bread is delicious, 'When my grandmother bakes her bread, I can smell the sweet, buttery aroma in the room next door. When I take a bite of the bread, I taste warm, mushed-up banana.' Do you see how adding details allows the reader to smell and taste the bread?")
• Model Skill with Non-Examples. Think aloud about adding phrases that don't effectively show the reader an experience. ("Now, what if I added these phrases: My grandmother's bread is delicious and yummy. It tastes so good. I've added more words, but they only restate to the reader that I think the bread tastes good. 'Delicious,' 'yummy,' and 'tastes good' are synonyms, so I'm just saying the same thing over and over without showing the reader how the bread tastes and smells.")
• Practice the Skill. Engage in one or more of the activities below to practice adding details. ("Now, let's add details to your writing that show the reader the experience...")

Activity A: Observe Closely, Then Write
If a student is struggling with making his writing interesting, intervene with Observe Closely, Then Write (Culham, 2003). This strategy allows a student to look at a normal experience from a different perspective.

Create an environment where the student is able to observe his surroundings. This could be something he does with you in the classroom, such as looking out the window for 3 minutes, or something you assign for homework ("Over the weekend, find a spot to observe your surrounding for 5 minutes; then, record your observations and bring them to class on Monday"). Once the student has filled out the observation sheet, engage in a conversation about the importance of details. Then, ask the student to transfer this strategy to his writing. Choose a piece of writing to expand upon, encouraging the student to use all five senses to show the reader his experience, not just tell about it.

Observe Closely, Then Write in Action
Teacher: Let's try an experiment. I want us to sit quietly and make observations, much like what you might do in a science classroom. We will be looking out of the window. Whenever you see something, write it down. I want you to pay close attention to the things you wouldn't normally observe. For example, what is happening in the sky? Do you see the clouds rolling by, or hear the birds chirping? See if you can notice the slightest movements or sounds, and write them all down. In 3 minutes, we'll share our observations.

Activity B: Building Blocks
If a student is struggling to add interesting details to his work, intervene with Building Blocks (Culham, 2003). This strategy allows a student to look at each sentence to see where he might add more description.

Tell the student that he will be using building blocks to write sentences. Write the name of each building block on the board, such as "When," "Where," "What time." "Size," "Color," etc. Then, write a simple sentence, such as "The dog howled," on the board. Ask the student to expand the sentence by using a building block. Write each new sentence as it is built. Then, give the student a new sentence (this could be a sentence from his own writing), and ask him to practice building it.

Building Blocks In Action
(Teacher writes 'The dog howled' on the board.)
Teacher: When I point to the building block on the board, I want you to elaborate on the sentence to include that building block. Ready?

(Teacher points to When.)
Student: Last night, the dog howled.

(Teacher points to Size.)
Student: Last night, the enormous dog howled.

(Teacher points to Name a Place.)
Student: Last night, the enormous dog howled outside my window.

Activity C: Sentence Guides
If a student is struggling to add details at the sentence level, use this strategy. Like Building Blocks, it allows students to zoom in on one sentence and add details. This strategy uses the five Ws (who, what, where, when, why), plus the one H (how), to help a student expand a simple sentence.

Choose a sentence from the student's writing. Then, ask the student questions (such as Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?) to expand his writing. "Let's see if we can expand this sentence: Sam is happy. Can you tell me why Sam is happy?"

Sentence Guides in Action

Watch as Erin Larkin-Maguire uses Sentence Guides to help a student add details to his writing. Notice how she uses prompts to support the student. Now watch Sentence Guides being implemented with a struggling writer. As you watch, consider how the teacher uses prompting during this intervention.

Culham, R. (2003). 6 + 1 Traits of writing. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Jlillis. (2017, February 28). 7 Steps to Teaching Writing Skills to Students with Disabilities. Brookes Blog. https://blog.brookespublishing.com/7-steps-to-teaching-writing-skills-to-students-with-disabilities/#:~:text=7%20Steps%20to%20Teaching%20Writing%20Skills%20to%20Students

Think about the following scenario, which takes place after a teacher has explicitly taught a student strategies for adding details:
Teacher: "What details can you add to this sentence to make it more interesting?"
Student: "I don't know. Nothing."

In such a case, what might you do?

When you are planning your lessons, you should anticipate that your student will make errors throughout. Here are a series of prompts that you can use to respond to errors. Keep in mind that all students are different, and that students might respond better to some types of feedback than to others.

If your student struggles to meet your objective, there are various techniques that you might employ in order to adjust the activity to your student's needs.

Now go here to discuss your deep dive.