From Sad and Wimpy to Super and Strong

A few days ago, we worked on expanding sentences.  I was finding that as our focus in writing shifted from narrative to opinion, it was resulting in some less than stellar sentences. Their details were becoming short and choppy.  So, we spent a day reviewing how to expand our sentences by adding details such as who, what, when, where, why, or how.

I started out by reading the book The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear.  It's a simple, simple story, but sometimes those are the best stories to drive a point home.

After reading the story aloud, I wrote a few statements about it on the whiteboard.  My sentences were very simple and lacking detail.  We worked as a whole group to turn these sentences from sad and wimpy to super and strong.

The wimpy sentences are written in blue and our new and improved super, strong sentences are written in red.

Once we finished writing our improved sentences, I randomly pointed to the sentences and had the kids show me if it was wimpy or strong (they slumped down in their seats for the sad, wimpy ones, and showed off their muscles for the super, strong ones).  They loved this!

Then, I paired the students up and they used a set of task cards to create some super, strong sentences.


The sentences they were given were all very wimpy and lacking detail.  They worked with their buddy to add 1-2 pieces of information to each of the provided sentences.  They really enjoyed the activity and some of them have kept the concept in mind since then as they informed me that they wanted to write super, strong sentences in the writing project we started yesterday.

You can get a free copy of the task cards and the recording sheet by clicking either image below.

Font: Across the Hall in 2nd, Graphics: The Clipart Factory and Melonheadz


Enjoy!!

Toodles!
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