Recently, I used a vocabulary chart as a writing aid for my students to write simple descriptive paragraphs. The chart has a plethora of words that can be used to describe emotions. The reason I used this chart was to help them to explore and use various descriptive words to describe emotions. This chart is very helpful as mediocre students can explore and refer to the chart whenever they need to describe emotions to choose the right words.
The wheel - of - emotions shown above, is the chart that I used for my lesson. Though there are many other wheels in different shapes and sizes, I find this to be helpful to build confidence among mediocre students to write essays. I wanted a chart where the vocabulary isn't too difficult for mediocre students to handle and this chart perfectly fits into my expectation.
If you are interested to explore more about this chart you can just type 'wheel - of - emotions on google search bar and you will find a lot of wheels which you can choose from but remember to choose something that your students can handle. If you want to look at some examples you may click here to visit my Facebook page where I have uploaded some 'wheels of vocabulary'. You may also download the chart here.
How did I use the vocabulary chart in my writing lesson?
I decided to use the chart above for a lesson to condition my students to use different words to describe emotions. Firstly, I gave them an example as shown in the picture below :
Based on the picture above, students were shown, how the paragraph started with the word 'bad' and the idea got extended from one word to another. I engaged my students in a short discussion and then gave each of them a copy of the chart to refer.
Students were then asked to construct a short paragraph in simple past tense using the words given in the vocabulary chart. If you notice, the vocabulary chart is colour - coded with the seven most basic emotions such as sad, bad, happy, surprised, angry, fearful and disgusted. Students were asked to pick one basic emotion and use the words that are associated with that emotion in the same colour to construct their paragraphs. They were not allowed to pick words from other groups. For example, if they were to choose the word 'happy' which is in yellow, their paragraph must only consists of words that are associated with the word happy which is colour - coded in yellow. However, if you are working with weaker students, you may change and make amendments to the rules.
To help the weaker students, I had also created simple writing prompts to get them started. The prompts shown below are a few examples that we can share with our students to help them. (We do not need to give this to the mediocre and good students)
The writing prompt can be used as a guide only if students want to use them. However, If they decide to construct their own ideas, we can just let to them try. Students were given 20 minutes for the in - class activity. When all of them had completed the task, they were to leave their products on their tables, walk around while maintaining 'social distancing' and read their friends' work . They were assigned the ' Two Stars and a Wish' activity. They were to write the stars and wishes on a note pad and put them on their friends essays. The following pictures show some examples of stars and wishes given by students to each other.
After completing the in - class task, I gave feedback and students were required to pick two other emotions and write short paragraphs as their homework. They were also given a self - assessment checklist for them to assess their own work before they hand in their work to me. The picture below shows the self - assessment checklist used for this lesson.
The video below shows examples of students work done in the classroom.
That is all for now and happy teaching!!
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