By: Lauren Ireland
Before class, assign the students the homework of going to www.found.com and browsing through the "find of the week." This is the website for Found Magazine, which publishes found texts (letters, notes, homework assignments, anything people find on the ground and send in). Ask the students to find something that interests them, print it, and bring it to class.
In class, ask the students to do descriptive writing about what they brought. Be sure to provide a fairly long period of time (20-30 minutes). Students might write a story around the piece, might describe it physically to someone who can't see it, imagine the details surrounding the writing of the piece, etc. Encourage the students to use all their senses in the description.
After the students have had a chance to describe their piece, have them share what they've written, and what it responds to.
This could be a good exercise not only for description, but also to talk about response (as opposed to summary). It might also be modified to talk about audience and purpose, and how we can gain clues about audience and purpose even without knowing the true context of a piece of writing.
