Subject: ELA (English Language Arts), ESL/ELL (English Language Learning)

Lesson Length: 30 - 45 mins

Topic: Descriptive Writing, Adjectives, Travel

Grade Level: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Standards / Framework:

Brief Description: Students design a comic brochure about a destination and notice language patterns used to describe a specific place.

Know Before You Start: This lesson is intended to allow students to practice using adjectives when speaking and writing.

Hook:

  • Read and discuss the sample comic.
    • What does the character use to describe Hawaii?
    • What place in the world would you like to visit? 
  • Point out that in English we use an adjective + the noun, e.g., tall buildings, busy city, warm weather, sandy beaches. 
  • Display images of several destinations from around the world. 
  • Have students turn and talk to describe the places they see in the pictures using the following prompts:
    • What might you expect to see here? 
    • What activities would people do?
    • What do you think the weather is like? 
  • Walk around to provide feedback on language structure. 
  • Reinforce the use of adjectives when describing a noun.

Activity:

  • Tell students to pretend that a big-shot advertisement agency is looking for young writers to design a brochure to win a trip to a destination of your choice. 
  • Using the sample comic as a guide, have them create a comic brochure of their dream destination that includes information on weather, the location's geography, and recreational activities. 
  • Remind them to make their destination interesting by using plenty of adjectives, pictures, and convincing language to convince tourists to visit!  
  • Remind students that they can upload images of their destination to Pixton.

Closure:

  • Have students present their comics to the class or to a small group.

Differentiation:

  • Allow students to use the speech-to-text feature.
  • Allow students to work in pairs or groups as needed.
  • Adapt sentence frames to match student language level.
  • Print out comics and have students highlight the adjectives used.
  • Allow students to use the voiceover feature to read their comics aloud.

Resources:

  • Comic to print or display