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For children to become fluent, imaginative writers, they need to understand the basic elements that create a story. The Sentence writing activity introduces this basic concept. To write a story, all a child needs is someone/something (the subject) doing something (the verb). The introduction of this grammatical language when teaching the sentence will assist with the later development of writing.
The Sentence |
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Aim
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This activity is an entry point to writing for beginning or reluctant writers. It is easy for children to feel a sense of accomplishment with their writing as they are able to participate.
The aim is to help children move from a single sentence into a short paragraph (3-4 sentences) of related ideas. |
Personal note: I use this activity at the beginning of every year. For younger students, it enables scope for personal differentiation while for older students, it is a great way to explore the impact of verb connotations. It also allows me to begin to set my expectations around punctuation (self-monitoring). |
Make sure you choose effective words that children can write about for subjects or verbs. A random list or unchecked 'spelling list' of words may not be suitable. Words that children can write about provide a simple entry point.
Pre-Writing
Before commencing the task, the children need to think of a verb for their subject or a subject for their verb, and complete the blank boxes. This introduces children to the basic stage of planning – think and write.
Depending on the needs of the students. The planning can be done as a whole class, with peers or individually.
Writing
Once the children have completed their planning, teachers can demonstrate how easy it is for a sentence to be created with a subject and a verb.
The children play.
What I love about this activity is that all students can participate. At a basic level, students are taking the two words already created in the pre-writing stage and then putting them together to make a sentence.
Initial teaching should focus on the subject and verb being used to create a sentence that makes sense. Following on from this, students can begin to explore the ideas of when, where, why and how? By thinking about these question prompts, students should be able to create a longer sentence. Finally, students should be introduced to adjectives to begin to add depth to their subjects.
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The Evolution of the Sentence:
The children play. The children play at the park. The school children play at the park. |
Personal note: This is purely an example to see how far this simple activity can be taken. Eventually using adjectives and when/where phrases would be all that is expected for the purpose of this activity. |
The school children play noisily at the park.
After school, the children play noisily at the park.
After school the children, who are still in uniform, play noisily at the park.
After school the children, who are still in uniform, play noisily at the park as their parents sit under the shade of a tree by the river and talk about their day.
Self-Monitoring
Self-monitoring focuses on the secretarial writing skills we want the students to have ownership over. The Sentence has two basic goals for students to work towards:
Is there punctuation?
Does it make sense?
By introducing these two goals and following it up with reviewing strategies, children, from the beginning, become responsible for the editing of their own work. This is an important step in building successful writers. Depending on the age group, it could be beneficial to select just one goal on which to focus; however, both goals are critical to the foundation of continued writing success and it is recommended that both are set for each task.
Is there punctuation?
Does it make sense?
By introducing these two goals and following it up with reviewing strategies, children, from the beginning, become responsible for the editing of their own work. This is an important step in building successful writers. Depending on the age group, it could be beneficial to select just one goal on which to focus; however, both goals are critical to the foundation of continued writing success and it is recommended that both are set for each task.
Feedback
Finding feedback to give at the sentence level can be difficult. If this lesson is pitched at a whole class, even in a year one or two classroom, then there are going to be children who need more. To give effective feedback, we can look closely at the vocabulary and grammatical features. The two areas I recommend would be adjectives and verbs.
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Adjectives: Have adjectives been used? Are the adjectives effective? Are there too many adjectives? Verbs: Could there be a stronger verb? If we change the verb (antonym/synonym), how does it affect the sentence? Can we remove relating verbs to make the sentence more active? |
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Remember, the type of feedback you give will depend on the level of the class.
After a few lessons, students should be able to write a sentence that makes sense with some description. They should also be able to punctuate their sentence.
Lesson progression and focus should be determined by the students that are being taught and not a predefined sequence. However, it is recommended that the following standards are consistently met before advancing to the next phase of this writing stage:
Teachers can use this activity to demonstrate different sentence patterns with which students need to become familiar. This task is ideal to begin teaching writing, and also for teaching new skills or responding to adjustments that need to be made based on student progress.
Lesson progression and focus should be determined by the students that are being taught and not a predefined sequence. However, it is recommended that the following standards are consistently met before advancing to the next phase of this writing stage:
- Students write sentences that make sense.
- Students mark sentence boundaries correctly and consistently.
Teachers can use this activity to demonstrate different sentence patterns with which students need to become familiar. This task is ideal to begin teaching writing, and also for teaching new skills or responding to adjustments that need to be made based on student progress.
Where to Next?There is so much that can be done with the sentence: however, the main aim of this task is to turn beginning or reluctant writers into more confident writers by enabling them to compose their ideas in a coherent and fluent manner.
Therefore, the next step would be the introduction of the follow-on sentence (a detail sentence) to help children begin to turn one idea into a related paragraph. |
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Extra Activities
- Add adjectives to describe subjects or other nouns
- ASVA (Adjective Subject Verb Adverb) or ASVAP C (Adjective Subject Verb Adverb Preposition Conjunction)
- Subordinate conjunction sentence – sentence that use subordinate conjunctions
- Review verbs and create word storms to build vocabulary and encourage use of powerful verbs.
- Begin sentences with verbs, subordinate conjunctions or prepositions.
- Explore sentences that show, rather than tell.
- Using conjunctions to join sentences
- Exploring relative pronouns to create adjectival phrases/clauses
- Learning about prepositions and adverbial phrases
- Demonstrating use of punctuation techniques e.g. semi-colon, ellipsis & colon
- Subordinate conjunctions and the creation of main & subordinate clauses
The sentence is the basic element of writing. Students need to know how to use it and control it to enhance their language skills. It should be used as the foundation task for beginning writers, but also as a tool for established writers to learn new skills and techniques.