Sensory Details Worksheets

About this resource

"The beach was nice." Help your 2nd and 3rd graders say what they actually saw, heard, smelled, tasted and touched. These sensory details worksheets start where young writers are: a five senses poster, a finished sort to look at, sense words to cut and glue, picture pages, short passages to color, and a chart and writing page that turn what they noticed into sentences. Print and go, in color or ink-saver.

WHAT IS INCLUDED - 31 pages

• Start Here - a quick start, what is inside with page numbers, how to use the levels, and a line for your class's own sense words
• A five senses poster - sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch in five circles, with the body part for each
• A finished sort - a model page with a picture and two sense words in each of the five rows, so children see what to do before they start
• Sense word sort - two sort mats with cut-out word cards: mat A has 10 word cards, mat B has 15 word cards (25 in all), five rows a mat, one for each sense
• What do you see or hear? Smell, taste or touch? - two picture pages, 12 pictures in all, each with a sentence start ("The drum sounds ...") and room to write a sense word; the first page has a word bank
• Sense words in passages - 4 short passages (A Beach Day, At the Bakery, A Rainy Walk, Campfire Night), 57 to 64 words each, with a color key and a box to count the sense words; the first two have the sense words marked, the last two do not
• My five senses chart - fill in what you notice for a place, one row for each sense, with a box for the best word
• Make it better - a model sentence and four plain sentences to improve by adding a sense word, with a three-word bank for each
• Write about your place - five sense sentence starters with writing lines
• Three levels, marked with a small shape: starting (a small picture on every word card, a word bank, marked sense words), building (no hints) and ready for more (find the sense words yourself, write whole sentences)
• Ink-saver, black-and-white copies of every student page
• An answer key, with the sense words in each passage listed by sense
• A What's Next page and the credits

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a set of print-and-cut-and-glue and write-by-hand pages with Whimsy Clips clip art, built for 2nd and 3rd grade and special education classrooms: big type, one short direction a page, room to write, and cutting pieces set edge to edge so there are as few cuts as possible. Every passage and sentence is invented. It is NOT a Google Slides, Google Docs or PowerPoint file, and it is not a fillable PDF. Some sense words honestly fit more than one sense, so the key says which sense each word was filed under and the Start Here page asks you to talk it through. There are no scores, no standards claims and no assessment claims.

Who This Is For

2nd and 3rd grade teachers, special education teachers, interventionists and paraprofessionals who want a clear, visual way to teach children to add sensory details, especially children who need pictures, short text and a hint-first step before they write on their own.