Exploring various genres with your students provides them with a variety of opportunities to express themselves and test their writing talents. Recently, I enjoyed using Thomas Kinkade's paintings (created a PowerPoint of selected winter paintings) to teach descriptive writing with LES fifth graders. We viewed the beautiful paintings and searched our senses to write descriptive paragraphs about his paintings. We charted the things we could hear, see, smell as well as how we felt, as if we were part of the painting. The students wrote some super descriptive sentences. Share one of your favorite genre writing activities.