Write it Right Now
Sentence construction and improvement in five to ten minutes a day
Denée Tyler, Lakeridge Junior High, dtyler@alpinedistrict.org
Like many of you, I struggle as a teacher with getting more writing into my curriculum while simultaneously
helping my students to write better. These self-starts have helped my students focus on the basic building
blocks – sentences.
Sentence Combining
Why do it?
“Working with sentences . . . help(s) [students] make those kinds of shifts that direct a reader’s attention to
what the writer wants to emphasize.” It makes the writer’s words more powerful.
Dean, Deborah. (2010). What Works in Writing Instruction: Research and Practices. p. 86.
Through sentence combining, students get enough practice with the rhythms of sentences that they
“internalize images of the sound, feel, and shape of successful writing.”
Strong, William. “How Sentence Combining Works.” Daiker, Kerek, and Morenberg. p. 340.
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Ideally exercises can be created from any texts that students are reading or from any sentences that
have interesting structures.
Students use their tool box of combining ideas to combine the sentences together.
The idea of sentence combining is to create good sentences, not long ones.
It’s perfectly okay if the student’s sentence is different from the original as long as it is grammatically
correct—I don’t always show them the original sentence.
It’s fun to combine sentences from the text you are going to read that day.
It’s also good practice to let students de-combine a sentence – basically going in reverse.
Options for combining (credit to William Strong):
1) Add connecting words
2) Take out unnecessary words
3) Move words around
4) Change word endings
Tips for ELs: Having pieces of sentences on paper that they can experiment with is very empowering for
them. They begin to see chunks of meaning in text that they might not have noticed otherwise.
Sentence Imitation
Why do it?
“What do I do instead [of nattering on about grammar]? I use a text as a mentor. A mentor text is any text
that can teach a writer about any aspect of writer’s craft, from sentence structure to quotation marks, to
‘show, don’t tell.’ I let Gary Paulsen show my students about active verbs and short sentences. I let Patricia
MacLachan show my students how to make phrases tumble off the ends of their sentences. I let newspapers,
magazines, or any piece of literature make grammar and mechanics points for me.”
Anderson, Jeff. (2005). Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer’s Workshop. p. 16.
“Many fields use models as a way to help novices gain experience. [As for writing], imitation is so much the
way we learn in other areas that it just makes sense!”
“Creativity theory suggests that studying models isn’t necessarily constraining: writers need to know what is
possible and what is ‘usual’ in order to make choices about following expectations or doing something
different, something creative.”
Dean, Deborah. (2010). What Works in Writing Instruction: Research and Practices. p. 155.
These are meant to be noteworthy model sentences from published authors that students can
 Examine (“What things do you notice about this sentence?”) and
 Imitate (“Now you try it, using this sentence as an example.”).
I think it is critical that I as teacher have created my own imitations, http://tinyurl.com/axfplmu , as a
second model. You will notice that I use texts and authors that we are already reading (Frederick Douglass,
Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, The Great Gatsby, Oscar Wilde, Tim O’Brien, etc.).
Tip for ELs: In the ELD world we rely on sentence frames http://tinyurl.com/mxw37vr .
Create a sentence frame for the sentence you are imitating so that ELs are only filling in the part that they are
changing. Do have them write the whole completed sentence once they’ve filled in the blanks.
Pick _____?
Why do it?
“Word play activities address core language arts standards, are more informal and comfortable for students
to work with, and at the same time promote more student creativity.”
Shanley, Roger W. (2007). “Paradoxical Oxymorons.” English Journal, 96(3). p.14.
“The most valuable attitude we can help children adopt – the one that, among other things, helps them to
write and read with the most fluency and effectiveness and enjoyment – I can best characterize by the word
playful.”
Pullman, Phillip (2005, January 22). “Common sense has much to learn from moonshine.” Guardian. Retrieved
from http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,5109668-99819,00.html
“Play is work in disguise. Playing with words is working to master the language.”
Anson, Joe. (2012). “All Work and No Play Makes Jack (or Jill) a Dull Writer.” Utah English Journal, 40.
Like many of you, I have a large whiteboard filled with magnetic poetry. Unfortunately, it’s just not practical
to have 25-30 students using it at once. So, I use another method for collecting cool words that comes from
Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words (1996).
Every year I pick one day to bring in as many magazines, newspapers, etc. that I can find, and as a whole class
we go word searching. I challenge them to find a certain number of verbs, adverbs, adjectives, nouns,
pronouns, conjunctions, and prepositions. We take their words and glue them to raffle tickets that I
purchased at Office Depot. This becomes our word bank. If we are doing something very descriptive, I throw
in the paint chips I’ve collected from Home Depot just for fun.
On Pick ____? days, I will post a number of tickets and an additional task (use a prepositional phrase,
appositive, introductory clause, FANBOYS, etc.). The students pick that number of words out of the bucket,
and then they set about creating sentences that contain the additional task.
If I can, I do this with the students while they do it. In case they have forgotten what a participial phrase, etc.
is, we go over it before they start – this is a great way to review grammar concepts.
Tips for ELs: Use vocabulary words that they need to know from the text you are studying. If you
preloaded vocabulary from the article students are scrutinizing in class, add those words to the mix.
Consider making a special mix of words from your text and words from an Academic Vocabulary List. Here is
a particularly good one by Dr. Dee Gardner from BYU: http://www.academicvocabulary.info/download.asp .
Sharing Out Loud with the Class
Why do it?
“If students are called on to read their sentence(s) aloud, the words are processed again. [. . .] Words, lots of
words, words in the right contextual register, alternative words, and combinations of words are the raw
material of composition.” Writing and then reading and talking about the writing work together to help
develop an ease and facility with language that benefits students.
Myers, Sharon. (2003) “ReMembering the Sentence.” College Composition and Communication, 54(4). p. 616.
I always have a pair and share before I do this so students can tweak if they wish. At the beginning of the
year I ask for volunteers; as the year goes on, I call on students to share. For many, this is the best part of the
day. Students are actually proud of and excited about what they’ve accomplished in a low stress situation.
Tips for ELs: Consider doing a write-pair-SWITCH-share; this lets students hear their own work aloud,
which is a great help to ELs as far as revising. Don’t pressure ELs to share until they are ready and willing.