Imagery DESCRIBING something

using the 5 senses

If someone says “There’s a deer” what do you picture?

It lets you know that thereis a deer, that you would see a deer,but it doesn’t describe it for youor give you a clue about whatit looks or sounds or acts like. So..that’s not imagery.

What details could you to describea deer?

This informational description of deer gives us more details, and starts to help us picture a deer… it’s a

general overview, not detailed imagery, but it’s starting to include some imagery

• Deer, a common name for hoofed mammals of the family Cervidae, are usually characterized by bony, branching antlers, which are shed and regenerated annually.

• This family ranges throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and North Africa, and contains 38 species.

• Most female deer give birth to one or two young each spring, six to eight months after mating. Many of the offspring, or fawns, are born with spotted coats, but the spots will disappear in a few months when the animal grown its winter coat. In some species of deer native to Europe and Asia, the adults also have spots.

• Because they have so many enemies, deer must be alert, relying on their keen senses of sight, smell and hearing to warn them of impending danger. Deer are now found on all continents except Antarctica. The moose is the largest member of the family and can weigh as much as 1,800 pounds. The smallest deer, the pudu, is the size of a raccoon and weighs around twenty pounds. Most deer in North America are white-tailed deer, with about 12 million living in the United States

Without imagery, giving descriptive details with your senses, you probably wouldn’t know

which of these deer we were talking about.

Pick one of the deer, and without saying which, list some details to describe it. Then, you are going to read your

description to a partner and see if he or she can guess which deer you are talking about.

Using imagery to describe a deer could include….

“You don't see the deer till they turn their heads—road full of eyeballs, small moons glowing…color of wet straw, color of oak leaves in winter.” – from the poem “Deer Hit” “The deer's eyes, black and fragile, stare back…its coat, thick, stiff like straw, with a straw-like shine…antlers, those little trees of bone, grown for a season and shed like leaves…eyes of wet ink, unblinking…The deer moves, smooth as a fish, is gone.” –from the poem “Deer, 6:00 Am”“ They dip their heads, hold forked hooves above snow, turn furred ears to scoop from the wind the sounds of hounds, or men” –from the poem “Winter Study”

Assignment

• Cut out a picture or pictures from the magazines, you can use a single picture or combine them (can be a person, room, landscape, object, whatever you want)

• After you glue it onto the construction paper, you are going to use imagery to describe it with all 5 senses, what it looks, sounds, feels, smells and tastes like

• Write your description on the construction paper with marker