Spiced Up Sentences! Sentence Fluency Lesson Plan

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Spiced Up Sentences! Sentence Fluency Lesson Plan

• Dawn Drake
• LITC 522
• 6/30/10

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Learning Target

• Students will increase sentence fluency skills
  through revision of simple, bland sentences.

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State Standards

• EALR 3 The student writes clearly and
  effectively.
• Component 3.2 Uses appropriate style.
• GLE 3.2.3
• K-1 Understands sentence fluency.
• 2-3 Uses more than one sentence type and
  structure.
• 4-7 Uses a variety of sentences.
• 8-10 Uses a variety of sentences consistent with
  audience, purpose, and form.

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Materials

• Paperlined and blank
• Pen/Pencil
• Markers, crayons, and colored pencils

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Procedure

1. Discuss with students what makes a sentence
   interesting. (Example ideas exciting adjectives,
   diverse vocabulary, varying length, descriptive
   details, etc.)
2. Students will write their own simple sentences.
   (Example I went for a swim.)
3. Teacher will collect and redistribute sentences
   and direct students to consider specifics of the
   circumstance in the sentence. (Example Where did
   you go swimming? When did you go? Why did you go?
   With whom did you go? Did you come back?)
   Students will use the answers to these questions
   to add color and spice to their sentence using
   detail and description. (Example I went for a
   midnight swim when my date pushed me into the
   water.)

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Procedure (contd)

1. Students will fold over the new sentence they
   have written, so that only the original simple
   sentence shows, and rotate their papers around
   the room. When they receive a new sentence,
   students will repeat step 3 to create a new
   spiced up sentence.
2. Repeat steps 3 4 until each simple sentence is
   accompanied by at least 5 spiced up sentences.
3. Share several of the original simple and spiced
   up sentences out loud. Have students discuss
   which they liked best and why What elements made
   a particular sentence spicy?

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Procedure (contd)

1. Have each student choose the best spiced up
   sentence they wrote. They will write the original
   simple sentence and their spiced up version on a
   blank piece of paper and decorate it. Each
   student will submit a decorated page to be
   compiled into a book of class spiced up sentences
   (you can offer extra credit for a student to bind
   the pages, decorate the covers, etc).

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Assessment

• Informal observation during writing process
  (and/or teacher can have students initial by each
  spiced up sentence they write).
• Formal assessment of book pages (teacher
  discretion or add a component to lesson where
  students create a rubric for assessment).

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Adaptations

• K-3 Create the simple sentences ahead of time.
  Do steps 3-5 as a class. Have class as a whole
  vote on the best spiced up sentences. For
  students with little/no writing skills, prepare
  the book pages for them and have them decorate
  the next day. Alternately, you could post the
  paired simple and spiced up sentences on a
  bulletin board.
• 4-7 Rather than making a book or bulletin board,
  have students post their favorite simple and
  spiced up sentence pairs on a class blog, web
  page or wikispace and comment on each others
  sentences.
• 8-12 Have students extend their favorite spiced
  up sentence(s) into a poem, song, or short story.
  Class can brainstorm ideas, if necessary.

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Source Citation

• Source Citation Idea for this lesson taken from
  Dena Wagners website http//csmstu01.csm.edu/st0
  3/dwagner/super_sentence_lesson_plan.htm.