Jelly Bean Description Activity

Firstly to write my Jelly Bean description I used two key web 2.0 tools:

• Wikipedia
• Twitter
• Flickr
  

• I found out that in Harry Potter they eat 'Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans'
• In the 1910's and 20's a Jelly Bean was a very stylish person
• They are orginally from Turkey
  

Two twitter responses:

• Anne B - Exploring the metaphysics of the jellybean could be interesting
• Kerry J - glistening, gleaming, dazzling the eyes -- with insides that will tantalise!

Things to think about before starting your writing:

• Write down some key words you think of when you think about Jelly Beans eg: sweet, colourful, hungry,
  
• Use a visual thesaurus to make these words more interesting eg famished, starving, malnourished, dulcet, tempting, bewitching, vivid, brilliant, glare
  
• Include ideas about the physical and emotional world of the topic
• Make sure you include a good balance of descriptive words such as adjectives and nouns that actually tell us what it is

My sample writing

At first I took a tiny bit of a vivid red Jelly Bean.  I choose this one because it is the colour I usually least like.  Beneath the crisp shell of each Jelly Bean lies a tiny tempting sugary surprise.  Each flavour a unique experience never replicated within the dull and predicatable experience of nature.  Only man could create these flavours - the flavour of colour.  With the crack of a the green shell a mix of limes and pears and watermelons and many other unidentifiable flavours, each brand adding their own unique twists and turns, sometimes more lime sometimes the surprise of a toffee apple.  So I bite this round little pellet, expecting a cough medicine like disturbing cherry flavour that I usually  only half chew and swallow without inflecting my tastebuds with too much of the red goo, no, no red goo.  Surprise, shock and relief this is cinannmon my spicy favourite.  I slow down.

For not every shell is cracked though the hard waxy shell though, for example like red, pink is just too good, it must be slurped and sucked and savoured.  It's light, almost transluccelent shell glistening, gleaming, dazzling the eyes -- with insides that will tantalise!  It is like chewing on a tiny little fingernail sized princess, complete with tiara and pink dress. 

What is your favourite flavour?  Further teaching ideas?  How would you use images to digitally convey the messages of the description?

Tags: digital literacy descriptive writing literac teaching ideas writing showme communicating
Posted at 07:31PM Aug 28, 2008 by Concetta Gotlieb  |  Comments[1]