Sentence Variation

I was offering a student feedback on her descriptive writing recently and something dawned on me. I always offer a compliment, as well as one comment, with my students, because you don’t want to bombard them with too many critiques. (More often than not…they’ll go back and rewrite the same thing they just submitted.)

I noticed this particular student started several sentences with “The” throughout the written piece.  I complimented her on her use of figurative language and I asked for a little sentence variation. It doesn’t mean she can’t use the word “The” to start her sentences; I just wanted her to see how differently the piece might look if she made any changes.  Maybe you already do this!

I always ask my students to read the passage out loud.  This, alone, will help catch many mistakes.  

I want to point out that this is her first draft with zero revisions or edits. This is exactly how the student wrote the original copy:

The sunrise in the sky

The sunrise in the sky shocked me with beauty. The pink cotton candy clouds floated across the sky.  The horizon was endless with excellent colors.  The big skies turned bright orange and the glittery waterfall reflected a great big rainbow.  Huge shadows came from a gigantic mountain. I froze with delite.  The sun smiled a mile wide and I headed for home.

After Revision:

The sunrise in the sky shocked me with beauty. Pink cotton candy clouds floated across the sky.  The horizon was endless with excellent colors. Big skies turned bright orange and the glittery waterfall reflected a great big rainbow.  Huge shadows came from a gigantic mountain. I froze with delite.  The sun smiled a mile wide and I headed for home.

I know changing the first word isn’t going to make or break a written piece, but I do want my students to think like authors.  In addition, it’s important for students to receive applicable feedback.

Additional Suggestions:

• Embed transitional or temporal words at the beginning of each sentence
• Start each sentence with a different letter
• You can always refer to my newsletter on 17 sentence starters

Fun Revision Strategy

I had a quick bout of insomnia a few weeks back and I was thinking about how I wish I could fall back to sleep.  Has this ever happened to you?  You stare at the walls and ceiling for what seems like hours on end.  This isn’t common for me, but something positive did come from my reflections that evening. 

I must have heard “Viva Las Vegas” earlier in the day because the word “dice” came to mind.  My next thought faded into writing.  I put one and one together and I came up with an idea. What happens when you put dice and writing together?  Nothing. Usually.  However…you can combine rolling dice with revision and I’m going to show you how. 

I put my plan into action the next day.  I asked my class to do a quick write, from a picture I took, while vacationing in New Hampshire. I gave them about 15 minutes to finish their written piece. I’ll list the steps in this process:

• Ask students to read their passage out loud to themselves or a seat partner
• Take out the dice from the math toolkits and place the pair on desks 
• Roll one (die) or two (dice)
• Add the dice together and make any necessary corrections/deletions/additions to that sentence
• Repeat at least two times
• The class rolled the dice numerous times and the revisions were endless

This lesson went over really well and they were engaged throughout the process. I shared my ROLES revisions with you in a previous post and now you have “Roll of The Dice Revision” as another way to revise.