Sentence Combining

I really love using sentence composition activities as teaching tools for writing and grammar. This year, most of my grammar instruction has come from sentence modeling, sentence imitating, and sentence combining--and I really am seeing the carry over into writing.

In a few weeks, we're going to start on some more difficult sentence combining. Sentence combining is a great strategy for improving grammar and writing. (For more on sentence combining read this article by Bruce Saddler and Kristie Asaro-Saddler.) I took advantage of the snow day to create a PowerPoint to introduce sentence combining:

Sentence Combining from Emily Kissner

You may notice that there are many water pictures in this presentation. I'm dreaming of summer! Also there are lots of wading birds--mostly because they are the most obliging birds and will stay still long enough for me to take a picture of them.

Notes
-February Homework is up and running! I made over the old Winter Homework texts and added an advertisement and a myth...Theseus and the Minotaur.
-Here is a link to my playlist of videos that go along with the homework texts. I'm hearing from teachers that they are using the texts for small group instruction or intervention as well as homework...that's great feedback.
-Right now I'm working on having my cake and eating it too: Making a social studies United States regions unit that is also differentiated fluency instruction. Is anyone else interested in such a thing? Tweet