Sensory details are those added to stories or essays that describe objects, people and places within the text. Adding these details to a story written by middle school students lets the reader imagine the way someone smells or looks, what a foreign city sounds like and how a pet feels when it is stroked or cuddled.
Including sensory details teaches middle school students how to make their stories, poems and other writings come to life so that a reader feels as if he is in the story. The more sensory descriptions a student includes in her writing, the more effective a story is at transporting the reader to the setting. Bringing places, characters and scenes to life in a piece of writing allows the person reading it to connect with the story, making it more memorable and engaging.
Though it takes more time, adding sensory details can make or break the grade a middle school student receives on a writing assignment. Begin by writing out the story from beginning to end. As you read it through, determine where additional descriptions would be helpful to the reader. For example, rather than the narrator saying it smelled bad, she could say it smelled like rotten garbage combined with motor oil. Instead of simply stating that the main character is walking down the road, the author could enhance the description by including sensory details about the type of road, the smell in the air and feel of the road on the character's shoes. Students can read the story aloud to a parent or friend and ask them which senses the story evokes. This will give the student an idea of whether the sensory details are having the desired effect on the audience.
If you teach middle school writing classes, the right classroom tools can get students excited and enable them to understand the material more effectively. Try comparing stories that feature sensory details with those that do not, and discuss the difference in how the students feel reading them. Give students a generic paragraph and ask them to spice it up with sensory descriptions. Have the students read the paragraphs aloud so fellow students can discover their classmate’s different take on the same story, allowing them to see how sensory details can change a story significantly.