Language about the Senses
Previous sazkills/knowledge needed
The children should have previous experience of sharing ideas and feel
at ease with taking part in a class discussion. This activity provides the children not
only with the opportunity to extend and deepen their knowledge of language, but also with
a considerable degree of excitement, so it is important to stress the rules of listening
and taking turns to talk.
Preparation
Try to provide two natural materials for each sense. These should give
contrasting sensory experiences, so that the children have a variety of interesting words
and descriptions to choose from. For example: touch, a smooth shell and a rough
stone, or a smooth pebble and a rough-surfaced shell; smell, a sweet-smelling
flower and an orange or an onion; taste, a lemon and some sugar; sound,
bells and a drum; sight, two contrasting pictures or photographs.
What to do
Gather the class together in the story corner. Ask each child to look
at the person nearest to him or her so that they can tell you the colour of her or his
eyes or something about her or his hair. When they have responded, ask them to look (for
example) out of the window, at the back wall of the classroom, on the top of the cupboard
and say what they can see there.
When they have responded, talk about how we use our eyes. Ask the
children if they can think of another word for seeing: looking, staring, vision, sight.
Get the children to close their eyes. Tap on the desk with your fingers, close a book
with a snap, whistle or sing. When the children have opened their eyes, get them to talk
about what they have heard and how they knew what you were doing without looking. Suggest
that they close their eyes again and listen to the sounds from outside and inside the
school. Establish the idea of listening and look for more connected words, for example: hearing,
ears, sounds.
Now ask the children to touch things around them, the carpet, a
neighbour’s jumper, their own hair, the skin on their face and so on. Establish the idea
of touch and suggest that the children look for words to describe how, for example, the
carpet feels: hairy, rough, woolly and so on. Look for more contrasting touch
words.
On the board draw eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth and a hand. Establish
with the children what senses we use ears and eyes, hands, noses and mouths for. Reinforce
the sensory words we use: touch (feeling), sight (looking), sounds (hearing), taste,
smell.
Tell the children that you are going to make a group for each of the
five senses and that they are to touch, look at, smell, taste or listen to two things.
They should try to find lots of sensory words to describe each thing – just as (for
instance) they thought of lots of words to describe the feel of the carpet.
Put the children into the groups and give out the contrasting materials
to each. Give them five minutes to think about the descriptions before they report back.
When the five minutes are up, get the class back together. Ask the
‘touch’ group to say what they have found: A rough stone, heavy, scratchy (like
what?) like my grandad’s chin, bumpy (like what?). Pass the stone round
and collect more ideas from the others, always keeping the idea of expanding and exploring
their language skills. Go on to do this with the other four groups.
Write some of the new words and phrases on the board beside the
appropriate drawing. Ask them to give ideas (from their previous experience with natural
materials) of things which will be suitable to go under each label, for example: orange,
onion, sugar for the taste box. Ask the children to draw two appropriate items
for each labeled sense. Encourage them to express ideas about ‘our wonderful world’ to
make a picture; this could be the world as seen from space, or a beautiful natural scene.
Bring the session to a close by talking about our five senses and how
we use them to find out about the world.
Suggestions for extension
The children can extend their imagery by thinking, perhaps, of the feel
of darkness, the colour of the wind, the sound of bluebells, the taste of holidays and so
on. Describe their best ideas into a Senses List poem.
Explore one sense at a time simply looking for contrasting adjectives: rough/smooth,
heavy/light, shiny/dull and so on.
Assessment opportunities
This activity offers boundless opportunities for assessment. Can the
children use contrasting words and phrases? Can they find more than one description for
everything? Can they move on to the more demanding language and imagery?
Display ideas
Make a large five-panelled frieze with collage-type pictures of things
we see, hear, touch, smell and taste. Print the title, Our five senses, placed
above. On the display table, put a basket of fruit (taste), a vase of flowers and bottles
of perfume (smell), percussion instruments (sound), and stones and shells (touch).
Performance ideas
Let children from each of the five groups make up a presentation piece
which illustrates the sense they have worked on and which uses some of the descriptive
words and phrases they have found. For example: I have eyes and I can see the
dark sky at night. I have eyes and I can see silver stars lighting up the dark. But (in
contrast) I have eyes and I can see the golden sun of morning. I have eyes and I
can see the bright blue sky of summer. The sound group could present the following: I
have ears and I can hear the deep thunder of the drums... This goes well against a
percussion background.
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