Descriptosaurus: Supporting Creative Writing for Ages 8–14

by Alison Wilcox

Now in a fully updated third edition, Descriptosaurus is the first book for creative writing that is a thematic expansion of a dictionary and a thesaurus; it provides children with a comprehensive resource with which to expand their descriptive vocabulary, experiment with language and sentence structure and build up narratives based around settings, characters and creatures.

Descriptosaurus positions the word, zooms in on it to examine the meaning, expands it into phrases, and then provides alternatives in words, phrases and sentences; the model was created and refined over a number of years as a result of feedback from children inside and outside the classroom as to the resources they required to inspire and assist them with their writing. For reluctant writers or those faced with blank page syndrome, it provides essential starting points to encourage putting pen to paper, not only inspiring children, but also building their confidence, encouraging them to use, apply and create using the correct grammatical structures, and adding colour to their writing through evaluation and experimentation.

New features for this updated third edition include:

Sample poems

Word banks and model sentences to provide a step-by-step process for development of vocabulary and understanding of phrase, clause and sentence structure

Contextualised grammar and punctuation instruction and guidance

Units of work where the models can be incorporated in a creative focus

A companion website containing all the features of the book, games, planning sheets and vocabulary builders

This is an ideal resource to dramatically improve children’s creative writing for all KS2 primary and KS3 secondary English teachers, literacy coordinators and parents. It would also make an excellent classroom book for PGCE students, particularly Primary PGCE with English specialism.

475 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 7, 2008

Reviews

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE LOVE LOVE! I cant wait to put this to use! I can already see the wall charts that this will create, pages and pages of great mentor sentences that students can study and imitate before finding their own voice. A MUST HAVE for creative writing teachers, though this works great for non-ficiton work where the student needs decription :) must by more copies for the department!

[Libby · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Year 4 placement class have found this book really useful for supporting their independent writing. I also found it extremely helpful in making my English teaching resources for fiction narratives (in modelling sentences, providing word banks, etc.). A must for any teacher/classroom.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that is going to be with me for a long time - 5*

WOW. I keep thinking if I had this book in September... Ah well. Hindsight is a good thing.
I was recommended this from my 1:1 zoom meeting with a T4W consultant.