Sentence Observations
Sentence observations involve looking at mentor text with students to help them discover how
grammar and mechanics works with already published authors.
To get ready for sentence observation mini-lessons, choose interesting, well-crafted sentences
from texts that you have read aloud together as a class. Then write the sentence(s) on a piece
of chart paper before the lesson. The day of the lesson, call the students to the floor in a
meeting area.
Start the lesson with the phrase, "What do you observe about this sentence?" The conversation
that follows is dictated by the students; they are the ones who should tell what they observe.
The teacher’s job is to record the class's thinking on the chart, and to clarify certain points about
grammar and mechanics as they are mentioned. Always have multiple colored markers in your
hand to help record their thinking on the actual sentence.
These sentence observations work on many levels. Sometimes, they help to "discover"
something new about grammar and mechanics; the students will be getting a first exposure to a
new concept. Other times, the observations help review something already learned. In essence,
each lesson is differentiated just because all learners in the classroom have a different
knowledge base.
As time goes by, and you do many sentence observations with the students, it will be amazing
to see the level of sophistication the students develop. Putting a routine like sentence
observation into your teaching of literacy and writing will provide students with authentic and
meaningful ways to learn about grammar and mechanics.
Formative Assessment:
To assess individual student’s level of understanding as it applied to sentence observation, a
quick paper and pencil activity is all that is necessary. The results of the assessment would
help to guide in the planning of further instruction for each child. Here’s how it works:
Give each student 2 typed sentences on a piece of paper. As them to write down
everything they observed about the sentences. Then have the students turn them in.
At a quick glance, the teacher can see the varied levels of grammar and mechanics
knowledge that the students have. This can help the teacher with the “next steps” in grammar
and mechanics instruction.
Steps in the Process:
Assessment First
Start the school year getting to know the students as learners through DRAs, spelling
inventories, and many, many informal conferences. When these initial assessments and
conferences were done (about the end of September), your class can start to explore words and
their characteristics together. This activity is called word observation.
Sample word observation from early in the year.
In the beginning, word observations will be a window for the teacher to see what the students
already know about words, specifically the vocabulary they had about word features including
parts of speech, prefixes, suffixes, syllables, consonants, tense, and vowels. Through these
observations, the students will learn about words and their features together. The teacher can
jot down anecdotal notes about the class after a whole-class word observation activity. These
notes will serve as reminders about which students had misconceptions regarding words and
their features, and which students had a solid grasp of the concept being discussed.
Next Step - Looking at the Curriculum and Learning Outcomes/Indicators to Plan Word Study
Units
Once assessments, conferences, and beginning anecdotal notes were completed, the teacher
should spend time looking at the curriculum documents and breaking down the outcomes and
indicators into smaller, manageable parts.
For example, suppose your students needed to know plural rules and irregular plural rules, as
well as nouns (common and proper). You could put together a two-week word study unit where
the explicit instruction would be on nouns. The spelling purpose would be to teach plural rules,
both regular and irregular. The grammar purpose would be to teach the difference between a
common and proper noun. Something similar could be done with verbs. The spelling purpose
would be to explicitly teach the students how to add suffixes to verbs correctly. The grammar
purpose would be to teach present, past, and future tenses, and how to use them correctly in
the students' own writing.
Word Study and Grammar in the Writing Workshop
Sometimes the explicit instruction would occur within the context of a writing workshop minilesson. Having anchor charts up in the room will give the students a point of reference. To
create the anchor chart, the class discovers all the rules about the topic of the chart they can
find, and the teacher writes the rules on chart paper. Once you are done with your discovery,
this chart becomes the law in your room. Below is an anchor chart the class compiled about
capitalization rules:
Below is an anchor on the use of quotation marks:
Ongoing Sentence Observations
Based on the same concept as word observations, after each word study or grammar unit, the
class would do a sentence observation together. The three criteria to use when choosing
sentences to observe:
1. the sentence has to come from a class read-alouds so that students are familiar with the
text
2. the sentence needs to contain a grammar feature just learned about
3. the sentence needs to contain new features that haven't been studied yet. This will
increase your knowledge base, help your class to be more inquisitive about their
observations, and also allow you to look at the author's writing craft.
These after-the-unit sentence observations are a great vehicle for checking understanding of
features that have been covered. What the students observed about sentences earlier in the
year was much less sophisticated than what they will be observing as the year progresses.
Sentence observations by late in the year are color-coded and complex.
As the students’ word feature vocabulary and knowledge of grammar increased, so did the
depth of what they observed in sentences.
Ongoing Assessment and Differentiated Instruction
Administering a quick sentence observation assessment to the students is a powerful formative
assessment. It will give you the opportunity to know what students were capable of showing you
independently about word and sentence features.
The results of this assessment will help guide your group instruction with students for the next
several weeks.
Here is an example of one student's sentence observation from an early
assessment.
Other students were able to show some knowledge, but not with a high level of sophistication.
They may have even had a few misconceptions about some of the grammar/word/sentence
features.
Here is another student's sentence observation assessment.
After looking at these assessments, it is clear that the teacher has to differentiate my instruction
to meet the needs of the varied ability levels in the classroom. This will be done in small-group
instruction to help scaffold learning for those who need more assistance. Continue using this
kind of formative assessment at least once a month to monitor each child's progress.
Using Mentor Texts
Using mentor texts for sentence observations can be a very valuable tool. By using them, not
only can your students notice the grammar and word features of other authors' sentences, but
they can also talk about the craft of how the sentences were written.
Collecting Mentor Texts
Have special papers for students to jot down favorite (loved) work and phrases from the re-read
of a read aloud. Compile these and use for word and sentence observation lessons. See
attached collection sheet.
Favorite Phrases from Great Authors
Your Name ______________________________
Name of the Book ______________________________________
Author _______________________________________________
Phrase
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Favorite Phrases from Great Authors
Your Name ______________________________
Name of the Book ______________________________________
Author _______________________________________________
Phrase
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
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