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Would you like to help your students write better & New
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If you’ve been frustrated with the quality of your students’ Expansion
sentences, this blog post is for you!
Civil War
Writing sentences is just one aspect of teaching 5th How to Use
grade writing. Hop over to this post if you’d like to find out Primary
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How I Teach 5th Grade Writing!
5th Grade
Back to
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Advice for
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Upper
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5th Grade
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Help students change their Jamestown
thinking! Writing is NOT texting or Make
social media! Social
Studies Fun
OMG, what up, LOL – Our students have certainly
developed habits when it comes to expressing
themselves.

find it here
:
 find it here
Texting and social media have a place in our everyday
lives but students need to understand the difference  SEARCH...
between formal writing and the “writing” we do when
communicating with friends and family on technology
outlets.

Writing should be considered formal communication. let's connect

When we communicate formally, there is no place for
  
slang, shortcuts, or informal language.

I remind my students that their readers usually cannot
hear their voices or see their facial expressions when
reading their written compositions, so they must make
every effort to communicate clearly and in an interesting
way.
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Students need to see and study
examples of excellent sentences!
When I was a brand new teacher, I was frustrated with
my students’ poor sentences.

“This is not a complete thought. I don’t know what you

are trying to say here.”

I would say these things all.the.time.

Later, luckily, it dawned on me that I was expecting

students to write amazing sentences, and later Five
Paragraph Essays, without showing them great examples
first.

How obvious, right?!?

My students’ writing skills improved tremendously when I

began to show them multiple excellent examples of
writing before asking them to compose on their own.
:
Teach sentence structure and help
students vary their sentence
length!
Our students need to have a firm grasp on sentence
structure.

First, I lead students in a review of complete sentences.

They need to understand the parts of a complete

sentence because they’ve probably been using
fragments, phrases, and incomplete sentences in their
texting/social media lives.

Eventually, writing complete sentences becomes an

internalized process, but first, we must teach, practice,
and reinforce the writing of complete sentences.

I keep this simple: We look for subjects and predicates in

example sentences. We also discuss appropriate
punctuation and capitalization.
:
punctuation and capitalization.

We revise sentences that are missing a subject,

predicate, capitalization, or punctuation.

Once students are pros at writing complete sentences,

we work on expanding simple sentences into compound
sentences and adding dependent clauses.

Examples
Simple Sentence: Marley went to the park.

Compound Sentence: Marley went to the park, but she

decided to go home early.

Sentence with Dependent Clause: Because there was a

large dog loose at the park, Marley decided to go home
early. (Dependent clause is bold)

It’s important to explain to students that all sentence

types should be used in our writing. If we use ALL simple
sentences, our readers will become bored. If we use ALL
complex/longer sentences, our readers will become
overwhelmed. We need to VARY our sentence length to
keep readers interested.
:
Vivid language makes a
difference!
When writers use vivid language, they paint a picture in
their readers’ minds.

Vivid language helps readers to feel more connected to

the text.

I use the following example with my students.

Original text: My neighbor rode her bike away from the

dog.

Question: Does the sentence above paint a picture in

your mind?

Probably not… It’s quite general and maybe a little boring.

Text with vivid language: I looked up from my tree swing

to see my sweaty, terrified 8-year-old neighbor pedaling
her bike away from the yappy chihuahua that was
:
her bike away from the yappy chihuahua that was
chasing her down the block.

Question: Does the sentence above paint a picture in

your mind?

It sure does! Can you see the girl desperately pedaling

her bike while being chased by the little chihuahua?

#vividlanguagematters

Let’s wave goodbye to boring words!

As we all know, some word choices are better than
others.

Words like talk, walk, and said are boring.

I tell my students that they can absolutely use boring

words in their writing BUT they shouldn’t use them over
and over.

For example, if they find that they are using the word said
multiple times in their writing, they should find a better,
more interesting word.

Original: Paul said he didn’t want to go to the party.

Improved Text: Paul let out a small whimper and

whispered, “I don’t want to go to the party.”

That second sentence is so much more interesting than

the first, right?!?

To help my students remember to cut boring words out

of their writing, I create this display every year.

The hands belong to my students. They really get into

:
The hands belong to my students. They really get into

creating their handprints with construction paper

Near the Wave Goodbye to Boring Words display, I create

a Sparkle Words display.

Sparkle Words are special words that take your students’

sentences from dull to dazzling.

Our Sparkle Words include mostly adjectives and

adverbs. Check out the display below:
:
My students create gems and diamond rings out of
construction paper. We even jazz up the display with peel
and stick gem stickers.

As students read on their own and progress throughout

the year, they often come across sparkle words that they
want to add to the display.

I allow and encourage this! Students find it motivating to

add words to the sparkle board.

I also have them keep their own list of sparkle words in

their Writing Interactive Notebooks.
:
Great readers are usually great
writers!
Where do students find sparkle words and how do they
internalize sentence structure and learn new ways to say
things? By reading widely!

I encourage frequent reading for my budding writers. I

firmly believe that it’s not possible to be a great writer if
you aren’t reading the work of other people often.

Don’t create your own Sentence Improvement materials

for students! This mini-unit is ready-to-use! To view my
Sentence Improvement Mini-Unit, click on the image
below:
:
 To keep this
blog post for
later, simply
save this
image to your
teacher
Pinterest
board!

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