ABSTRACT

Now in its fully updated fourth edition, the bestselling Descriptosaurus continues to help improve students' creative writing, confidence and facility with sentence construction.

It provides young writers with a language toolkit with which to expand their descriptive vocabulary, experiment with language and sentence structure and build up narratives based around settings, characters and creatures. Its inspiring, original and proven approach encourages use of the correct grammatical structures, and helps children add colour to their writing through evaluation and experimentation.

This expanded edition has been tailored to the needs of children aged 9-12. It includes new vocabulary for non-fiction topics such as volcanoes, mountains and caves and an additional chapter to cover the popular primary topic of cold climates and polar exploration. Also new guidance is provided on how word clines can be used to expand vocabulary and explore shades of meaning and new tools provided to support the teaching of sentence construction using imitation, combining and expansion techniques.

Accompanied by Instructor and Student Resources containing all the games, planning sheets and vocabulary builders from the book, it is written for English teachers, literacy coordinators and PGCE students, particularly Primary PGCE with English specialism. 

part 1|115 pages

Settings

part |47 pages

Landscapes

chapter 1|9 pages

Woods, forests, jungles and rainforests

chapter 2|4 pages

Mountains

chapter 3|3 pages

Caves

chapter 4|10 pages

Beaches, islands, volcanoes and deserts

chapter 5|6 pages

Cold climates

chapter 6|5 pages

Ground and paths

chapter 7|4 pages

Streams, rivers, lakes and waterfalls

chapter 8|4 pages

Sea and waves

part |25 pages

Settlements

chapter 9|6 pages

Cities, towns and villages

chapter 10|2 pages

Roads

chapter 11|4 pages

Gardens

chapter 12|4 pages

Buildings

chapter 13|3 pages

Doors, halls, corridors and stairs

chapter 14|4 pages

Rooms

part |39 pages

Atmosphere

chapter 15|5 pages

Dawn and dusk

chapter 16|10 pages

Seasons

chapter 17|4 pages

Rain, mist and fog

chapter 18|4 pages

Wind, thunder and lightning

chapter 19|6 pages

Smell and touch

chapter 20|8 pages

Sound

part 2|101 pages

Characters

part |35 pages

Appearance

chapter 21|5 pages

Age, height and shape

chapter 22|5 pages

Face

chapter 23|4 pages

Eyes

chapter 24|5 pages

Mouth, teeth, nose and ears

chapter 25|2 pages

Hands and fingers

chapter 26|6 pages

Hair and facial hair

chapter 27|3 pages

Clothes

chapter 28|3 pages

Voice

part |63 pages

Emotions and personality

chapter 29|6 pages

Excited, happy

chapter 30|4 pages

Concentrating, determined

chapter 31|3 pages

Sympathetic, caring

chapter 32|2 pages

Relieved

chapter 33|8 pages

Angry, irritated, aggressive, impatient

chapter 34|5 pages

Cold, evil, arrogant, sly

chapter 35|10 pages

Frightened, timid

chapter 36|6 pages

Nervous, shy, embarrassed

chapter 37|6 pages

Sad, miserable

chapter 38|5 pages

Tired

chapter 39|6 pages

Pain

part 3|33 pages

Creatures

chapter 40|6 pages

Parts, size, shape, colour and covering

chapter 41|3 pages

Head

chapter 42|2 pages

Eyes

chapter 43|4 pages

Arms and legs

chapter 44|3 pages

Wings and tails

chapter 45|3 pages

Smell and sound

chapter 46|2 pages

Movement

chapter 47|2 pages

Habitat

chapter 48|3 pages

Abilities and actions

chapter 49|3 pages

Weapons and destruction

part 4|104 pages

Grammar in a creative context

section Section 1|18 pages

Words

chapter 50|6 pages

Word classes classification

chapter 51|4 pages

Word classes summary table

chapter 52|3 pages

Word clines (shades of meaning)

chapter 53|3 pages

Adverbs

section Section 2|28 pages

Phrases and clauses

chapter 54|5 pages

Subject and predicate

chapter 55|3 pages

Grammar tools

chapter 57|10 pages

Poetry

chapter 58|6 pages

Connecting sentences, paragraphs, scenes

section Section 3|56 pages

Sentence Construction

chapter 59|5 pages

Sentence construction investigations

chapter 60|3 pages

Sentence imitation

chapter 61|5 pages

Sentence combining

chapter 62|2 pages

Sentence combining: poetry

chapter 63|4 pages

Summarising non-fiction texts

chapter 64|3 pages

Creating a sentence combining exercise

chapter 66|2 pages

Sentence expansion

chapter 67|11 pages

Modelled sentences

An action scene

chapter 68|11 pages

How to build an action scene

chapter 69|5 pages

SCIR

The Wolf