Getting the Sense of Sensory Details

Robert King

As a novelist, I love sensory details: the red scarf, the crumbling cookie, the scent of coming rain. They’re just words, but they can take us away to other places. The right sensory details allow readers to encounter the writer’s experience as if it were their own.

Using the Five Senses

The different senses are weighted individually, bearing unique effects. Understanding how a particular sense impacts the reader can help the writer create specific effects:

• Seeing is believing: People trust what they see. That’s why eyewitnesses say, “I saw it with my own eyes!” If you want readers to believe something, show them.

  Jackson marched up the street toward Tawni’s house, the present box clutched in his fingers. Up ahead, her front porch light beamed yellow. He slowed on the sidewalk. He’d have to stand on that porch for the whole block to see, ring the bell, wait, and hope.

  A car cruised slowly past, the driver rubbernecking.

  Jackson turned away and peered at the card on top of the present. It was bent. His thumb had pressed a small crater into the drawing of mistletoe.

  He glanced one last time at the glowing porch, then turned toward the street and crossed it, jamming the card into a garbage can waiting in the gutter.

• Did you hear that? Hearing is about understanding how a person feels or thinks. To reveal characters, have them speak. Hearing is also about speculation. You hear a footstep. You hear running water. Use sounds to create speculation about what is happening.

  Outside Tawni’s window, a garbage can rattled loudly in the street. An old man shouted a threat, and a young man echoed it. Tawni plucked out her earbuds and tiptoed to the window to peek out.

  No one was there. Rain began to patter in the lengthening shadows.

  Shivering, Tawni drew the sash closed, clicked the lock, and dragged down the fluttering shade.

  “Tawni,” came a muffled voice outside her window, “I’m getting soaked.”

  Her breath caught. “Who’s there?”

  “Jackson.”

  Another voice—Daddy yelling from the basement: “Who you talking to, Tawni-Girl?”

  “Nobody, Daddy. It’s just me—singing to my MP3!”

[Read more.]

In the News

Recent articles on 21st century skills, inquiry, project-based learning, media literacy, and education reform

What Three Big EdTech Investments Say About the Future of Education: This article on Fast Company’s Co.Exist Web page talks about how tech innovators are helping teachers adopt the latest educational trends: Common Core curriculums, “adaptive” learning technologies, and the use of social media. It’s getting easier to connect with useful core-standard assessments, to offer digital lessons that adapt to students’ learning patterns (as they participate), and to safely network with other teachers and with your students.

On Land and in the Bay, Innovation Tackles Truancy: The New York Times Web site offers this story about a project-based program in San Francisco that has dropped the district’s truancy rate by 31 percent since 2008. Trey Bundy reports that students meet all of their academic requirements through one hands-on course per semester. They may build and sail boats in the bay, program robots, put on plays, hike the Sierras . . . all while engaging and learning math, science, history, and English. And thanks to these hands-on experiences, many students who were “missing in action” before are now on track for graduation.

National Park Service Expanding Reach into STEM: Nora Fleming shares this story on the Education Week Web site, highlighting how one middle school in Palo Alto, California, is participating in NatureBridge. This hands-on education program has been partnering with the National Park Service for 40 years. Nowadays, their efforts are fitting right in with the nation’s push to improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) instruction and to foster environmental literacy, one of the 21st century interdisciplinary themes. Using inquiry-based instruction, NatureBridge grabs students’ interest and encourages them to pursue careers in STEM fields later on.

From Finland, an Intriguing School-Reform Model: This New York Times article by Jenny Anderson relates Finland’s educational success story. Over the past 30 years, they have managed to bring their schools and teachers to a standard of excellence. A few interesting details surface in the story: Finnish children do not set foot in a school until they are 7 years old, they are not tested (at all) for the first six years of their education, all teachers have master’s degrees, and there are others. Read what proponents and critics have to say about trying to apply the Finnish model in the large, diverse school districts of America.

Project-Based Learning for Digital Citizens: Edutopia shares this piece by Andrew Marcinek, digital-literacy instructor at Burlington High School in Burlington, Massachusetts. Mr. Marcinek appreciates that his students have begun to “author their own learning,” moving way beyond their old “comfort zone” of being spoon-fed. Through projects that incorporate skills from various subject areas, students have honed their collaborative skills and also discovered that, while recall and memorization may be important, applying concepts and demonstrating understanding rank even higher. The article links you to two of the students’ projects: a video about what it’s like to be a student nowadays and a digital citizenship Web site.

Developing Students’ Academic Vocabulary Helps Beat Achievement Gap: Ben Johnson’s article on the Edutopia Web site reports how one administrator discovered the importance of background vocabulary work in science and math classrooms. Finding a disturbing achievement gap between ELL and native English speakers in these classes, he looked for a way to diminish it. With “sheltered instruction” methods that connect learners with new vocabulary in many different contexts, students were better prepared to tackle their math or science lessons, and the achievement results were astounding. Actions, pantomime, pictures, graphics, video, and more came into play. This report shares a good number of the strategies that worked.

Thoughtful Learning: Upcoming Events

ASCD Convention (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

Thoughtful Learning will be exhibiting at the ASCD annual conference from March 24–26 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, PA. We’ll provide more detailed information as the show approaches.

In Focus: Improving Social and Emotional Intelligence, One Day at a Time

We are developing a new line of products titled In Focus: Improving Social and Emotional Intelligence, One Day at a Time. The author of the line, Thomas McSheehy, has taught elementary school for 21 years and has been a social worker and family therapist for 16 years. Each book (K–2, 3–5, 6–8) provides concise daily activities to help your students develop their social and emotional intelligence by

• increasing attention and focus,
• reducing bullying and impulsive behavior,
• elevating self-esteem and confidence,
• strengthening social skills, and
• improving teamwork and collaboration.

For more information, download a free sampler of In Focus grades 6–8. Also, watch for more in future editions of the Thoughtful Inquirer!

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