For Elementary Students
by Jane Feber
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Noun/verb, noun/verb. These simple sentences just have to be put to rest! It’s time to teach students, at an early age, how to become more proficient writers. Once students have mastered the basics: end punctuation and writing simple sentences, it’s time to teach them how to acquire a more mature command of the language.
To do this, I begin with word choice. Most all teachers do an activity similar to this. Give students a simple sentence The boy ran and have them rewrite it by changing the verb – The boy sprinted. After doing an activity such as this for a while, show students how to turn a simple sentence The boy ran into a more visual picture by adding more descriptive words and phrases. The boy ran then becomes Upon seeing the bear through the corner of his eye, the boy sprinted through the forest over fallen trees and brushy scrub. Melissa Forney, in her book Razzle Dazzle Writing, has several great activities to help students show not tell.
Another activity to follow this one is to have students create flip books where they begin with a simple sentence then lift the flap of the flip book to embellish the sentence.
Below is how one student embellished the sentence He was depressed about his grades.
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Another activity to assist students with embellishing sentences can be done through a series of mini-lessons. Before the lessons, instruct students to trace their footprint, cut it out, and trace it to create six footprints that they will cut out and number from 1 to 6. You will provide mini-lessons as students embellish their sentence one step at a time.
For the first mini-lesson, students will write a noun/verb sentence after the mini-lesson on nouns and verbs. Brian P. Cleary’s books A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink: What is a Noun? and To Root, to Toot to Parachute: What is a Verb?
can be used to create this mini-lesson. Students will then use footprint #1 to write a noun/verb sentence. For this lesson the noun can be their name. (Jane traveled.)
The second mini-lesson will be taught on adjectives and adverbs. Again Brian P. Cleary’s books, Hairy, Scary, Ordinary: What is an Adjective? and Dearly, Nearly, Insincerely: What is an Adverb?, can be used for this lesson. These books can be shown on the document camera to illustrate the use of adjectives and adverbs. Students will then take footprint #2 and rewrite their noun/verb sentence adding an adjective to the noun and an adverb to the verb. (Curious Jane traveled slowly.)
The third mini-lesson will be on prepositional phrases. Brian P. Cleary’s book Under, Over, By the Clover: What is a Preposition? can be used for this lesson. Once students are familiar with prepositional phrases, they will use footprint #3 to add a prepositional phrase to the subject of sentence #2 and a prepositional phrase to the predicate of sentence #2. (In the summer curious Jane traveled slowly across the country.)
Once the three footprints are completed, students will then be taught the comma/conjunction rule and how a comma and a conjunction can be used to form a compound sentence. Again, Brian P. Cleary has a book called But and For, Yet and Nor: What is a Conjunction? that can be used for this lesson. Once students are familiar with how to use a comma and a conjunction to connect two sentences, they will then, on
footprint #4, write their previous sentence (#3) and add a comma, conjunction, and a new noun/verb sentence. (In the summer curious Jane traveled slowly across the country, and the car broke.)
Students are now on their own to write
footprint #5 where they will add an adjective and an adverb to sentence #3 as they did in sentence #2 and complete footprint #6 by adding the prepositional phrases as they did in sentence #3. You are now reinforcing what was taught previously by having students complete sentences #5 and 6 by themselves.
(In the summer curious Jane traveled slowly across the country, and the old car broke down.)
(In the summer curious Jane traveled slowly across the country, and in the mountains the old car broke down near a cliff.)
This activity allows students to write more mature sentences. This activity can also be used to describe characters in stories, events in history, and processes in science.
Example
Volcanoes erupt.
Shield volcanoes erupt slowly.
Shield volcanoes in Hawaii erupt slowly down the mountain.
Shield volcanoes in Hawaii erupt slowly down the mountain, and the land changes.
Shield volcanoes in Hawaii erupt slowly down the mountain, and the scenic land changes slowly.
Shield volcanoes in Hawaii erupt slowly down the mountain, and the scenic land around the volcano changes slowly over time.
This activity, Step by Step, can be found in Student Engagement is FUNdamental by Jane Feber published by Maupin House/Capstone.
As a middle school language arts
teacher for 36 years, Jane Feber’s innovative approach to
instruction has earned her several awards including the AMLE
Distinguished Educator Award, the Gladys Prior Award for Teaching
Excellence, Florida Council of Teachers of English Teacher of the
Year, Duval County, FL, Teacher of the Year, and the NCTE Edwin A.
Hoey Award. Jane was a National Board Certified Teacher and is also
the author of Creative Book Reports: Fun Projects with Rubrics for
Fiction and Nonfiction, Active Word Play, Student Engagement
is FUNdamental, and Engage Striving Students in the Common Core
Classroom published by Maupin House/Capstone. You can
contact Jane through her website at www.thebetterteacher.com.
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