Crafting Writers Ch 4 & 5

Ch 4 - Catagories of Specific Craft
The chapter covers 5 main catagories that help writer's develop their craft (Five Senses, Show Not Tell, Dialogue, Sentence Variety, & Word Choice).
The Five Sense catagory show the imporance of incorporating ALL of your sense in your writing. By describing what the writer wants the reader to see, hear, taste, feel, and smell; the reader can better understand what the writer is trying to portray. The textures you feel, the colors you see, and the volume of things you may hear are all ways to incorporate some of the 5 senses in writing.
The Show Not Tell catagory talks about how we want the reader to feel certain emotions and experience certain thoughts. Instead of simply saying "I was sad.", the writer can be more specific by saying "I was so sad that I could cry forever." The first sentence is a simple 'tell' which is not as well written as the second sentence, which is a 'show'.
Dialogue is another great way to add 'umph' to a writer's craft. By using dialogue properly, the writer can truly express the emotions of certain confersations. The chapter also addresses the use (or overuse) of the word 'said'. Showing students that a person can 'yell', 'whisper', 'shout', or 'cry' can help the reader experience the true emotions of the characters in the peice of literature.
Word Choice is not only a great way to make writing more interesting and varied, but it can also expand a writer's vocabulary. Repetition of certain words can sometimes make a piece of literature seem uninteresting. Using synonyms can also better reflect what the writer is trying to reflect.
Sentence Variety explains how the variety of sentence length and structure can also help portray certain mood and describe the plot of the story. Using 2-or-3 word sentences, long then short sentences, starting sentences with different words, and starting sentence with different objects are all ways that a student can add sentence variety to help them with their craft.

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Ch 5 - Crafting With Punctuation
When we see developing writer's first works, the spelling and the letters are usually not standard ways of writing, however, in some cases while children are still grasping concepts of word development they may already have an idea about punctuation. This chapter address punctuation such as periods, quotation marks, and commas; and how they can be used to add description and personality to one's own craft. While students will first begin to understand common uses of these punctuations, they can then personalize their use of them.

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Final Thoughts
For me, I can relate to this. Whenever I write about something passionately, I tend to write long (sometimes too long), descriptive sentences because I want to get my point across and make the reader feel the same enthusiasm I have for it. However, I wasn't until my late, late years of education that I learned of this independence. In elementary school, I was taught to use a dependent phrase here, or use a independent phrase here, or follow sentence structure of subject then verb then preposition. Boring. I really enjoy the fact that we are focusing on student's developing their 'craft' at a younger and younger age. Perhaps this will be more effective in 'turning kids on' to writing.