Details, Details, Details!!!!

You can't see them as well as I would like, but because of the lighting and the fact I was taking pictures with my cell phone, this will have to do.  During the month of January we used a lot of writing prompts that talked about snow. Earlier in the week we read Snowed in at Polkweed School.  The students were asked to write about what they would do if they got snowed in at school.  This is complete fantasy for them living in Eastern North Carolina and not having any snow this Winter.  After grading journals I realized that my kids were having trouble with details and I thought this would help them.  The students were shown my example first.  I drew a cat on the blue paper and used chalk to draw a snow scene. I used transparency sheets to cover the the drawing.  Then I used white out on the transparency to cover the drawing underneath.   At the top of the paper it says, "It SNOWED and it SNOWED until it covered..."  I put the numbers 1-5 and gave the students five details about a cat without coming out and using the word cat.  The students had to guess what the snow had covered up.  I had them brainstorm about something and write it out on writing paper first to check for comprehension of the assignment and spelling errors before allowing students to transfer it to the pre-made sheets.  During our calendar time the next day students were allowed to share theirs with their classmates and see if they could guess what they had chosen.  They loved it.