The Abandoned Farmhouse--Whole-Class Activity
 
The following is a visualization and description activity.  Students should close their eyes and visualize the story as the teacher reads it aloud.  Then, in a whole-class discussion, students should generate a description of the front porch while the teacher writes it down in a paragraph on the overhead.  After a first draft is completed, the teacher may want the students to engage in an oral revision process of the paragraph, tailoring it for a particular mood.  Click here for a sample.  Following the whole-class discussion, students should complete a written description of their own.  Click here for that assignment.
 

            Imagine that tomorrow morning you wake up, and it’s a beautiful day, probably one of the last days like this before winter returns to Chicago.  You pack a lunch, get on your bike, and start traveling down the main street in your neighborhood, away from the noise and bustle.  The day is so beautiful and you’re feeling so good that you keep going and going…. And going…. Pretty soon, you’ve left the city behind.  You know you’re not in the city anymore because the grey and black paved streets have turned to dusty, gravely, tree-lined roads.  The gravel bits crunch when your tires turn over them.  When you take a deep breath, your lungs fill with clean, fresh air.  It’s getting warmer and the sun looks like a giant tangerine.  The black sweatshirt you tossed on this morning covers your skin like an oven, so you take it off and tie it around your waist.  In the distance, off to the right-hand-side of the road, you spot some sort of building—it looks like an abandoned farmhouse.  You decide to check it out.  You turn off the road.  Tall, green weeds swish past you.  There are no sounds of machines or other cars.  There are no human voices.  All you hear is the gurgle of running water—maybe a creek—and the high pitched caw of a crow.  You are moving slowly because the treads of your tires are getting stuck in the chocolate-colored mud.  Finally, you make it.  You get off your bike, stepping onto what must have been an old, gravel driveway.  You’re standing outside the farmhouse, looking up the six, rickety, worn, wooden stairs that go up to the front porch.  The white paint on the house is weathered, cracked, and peeling off.  You climb each stair one at a time.  You reach the front porch...