Descriptosaurus

Book excerpt: Now in its fully updated fourth edition, the bestselling Descriptosaurus is the first book for creative writing that is a thematic expansion of a dictionary and a thesaurus; it provides students 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. 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 students 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 students, 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 expanded edition include: - Additional vocabulary, including technical vocabulary for non-fiction topics such as volcanoes, mountains and caves - An additional chapter to cover the popular primary topic of cold climates and polar exploration - How to use word clines to expand vocabulary and explore shades of meaning - Guidelines, resources and models to scaffold learning about grammar - Sentences that have been expanded and reworked to provide modelled sentences for DFI (Detail, Flow and Impact) - Guidelines, resources, exercises and models 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, this is an ideal resource to dramatically improve students' creative writing, confidence and facility with sentence construction for all primary and secondary English teachers, literacy coordinators and parents. It would also make an excellent classroom book for PGCE students, particularly Primary PGCE with English specialism.