Lesson:
We spent most of the class period reading aloud and evaluating country reports. It was evident that the students worked diligently on these.
We spent the last part of the class period reminding students about various ways to begin sentences for more variety.
Borrowed from the Institute in Excellence guidelines from Andrew Pudewa, those basic sentence openers include:
1. Subject
2. Prepositional phrase
3. "-ly" (Adverb)
4. "-ing" (Participle)
5. Clause (Dependent clause)
6. VSS (Very short sentence)
7. "-ed" (Past participle --- optional, for more advanced students)
Examples:
1. Subject: A hare always boasted about how fast he could run.
2. Preposition phrase: In his opinion, he was the speediest animal around.
3. "ly"/Adverb: Surprisingly, the slow tortoise challenged the arrogant hare to a race.
4. "ing"/Participle: Running as fast as he could, the hare was soon far ahead of the plodding tortoise.
5. Clause: Since he was sure he would win, the confident hare lay down for a nap and slept while the tortoise passed him by and crossed the finish line.
6. VSS: The tortoise had won!
7. "ed" /Past Participle: Pleased, he declared, "Slow and steady wins the race."
Assignment: I provided each student with two starter stories and some accompanying handouts. The students are to rewrite the two sample paragraphs for more variety. Each rewritten paragraph should contain all six of the sentence openers listed here. However, the openers do not need to be in the numbered order given here. Any sentence can begin with any opener that will work for it, and the sentences can be reworked as needed, as long as the ideas stay the same.
Students are not to do any topic research; the rewritten paragraphs should include the same information, with nothing significant added or omitted.
No comments:
Post a Comment