by Donna | Apr 4, 2011
A few more ideas for encouraging/helping your child with sentence writing, then we’re on to something new!
- If your child is hesitant to write because of penmanship difficulties, either teach him how to type (use a typing program for young kids) or write for him as he dictates to you. He needs to see that penmanship difficulties do not mean that he is unable to write. Writing is thinking. Penning is art.
- Try having him write sentences about things you are doing. For example, have him write a sentence each day in a journal about that day or every Saturday about the weekend.
- Or have specific things listed at the top of a journal for him or her that he/she writes about:
- Monday: Weekend
- Tuesday: Food
- Wednesday: Book
- Thursday: Animal
- Friday: Person
- Saturday: Movie
- Have him write a sentence under a picture, similar to captions. These pictures may be ones that he has drawn or colored or cartoons or pictures from a book.
- Make a list of nouns and a list of verbs. Have him write a sentence using one word from the noun list and one word from the verb list. For example:
NOUNS VERBS
Dog run
Boy jump
Girl catch
Radio blare
Cow ate
For more sentence writing help, along with help in other areas of language arts, for the second/third grade level (i.e. already reading well), check out the sample of the our books, “Character Quality Language Arts,” Level Pre A (
https://www.tfths.com/samples.php ). There is a full month that you may use with our child free of charge. Happy writing!
by Donna | Apr 4, 2011
Just a couple of most posts about sentence writing for our “Homework Help” feature this month—then back to more tips and tricks for all readers, writers, speakers, and thinkers! Below is a list of other sentence writing ideas for you and your student/child:
- If your child likes the feeling of creating through writing, but doesn’t think he can write sentences, you may want to try one of the following:
- Have him copy sentences that you write for him or sentences out of one of his favorite books.
- Write sentences for him with a light colored highlighter and have him write over the highlighter with his pencil.
- Write “fill in the blank sentences for him.” When I was in teacher’s college, these were called “cloze sentence” (for those who want to google to find out more). This is where you write sentences but leave blanks for him to fill in key words. This way you have started the sentences for him, but what happens in the sentence and to whom is still his creation. (There’s a site that lets you build these and print them for your kids/students at https://www.theteacherscorner.net/printable-worksheets/make-your-own/fill-in-the-blank/ .)
- If he can’t think of anything to write about in his sentences, ask him questions that he must answer in sentence form. “What is your favorite animal?” “What is your favorite color?” etc.
- If he is having trouble writing “real” sentences (i.e. write fragments or dependent clauses instead), have him say it aloud and ask him more questions. For example, if he says “Blue” (to the favorite color question), say “Blue what?” If he says “favorite color,” continue to coach him. “Try this…Blue is…can you make that into a complete sentences instead of just words?” (Coaching is a huge part of teaching writing!)
- If he likes to write stories, have him dictate sentences to you (or alternate giving sentences—he then you) that you pen for him.
- Finally, have him write a sentence a day to get used to sentence writing. We had journals for our kids that they copied verses and quotes in—one a day—to help them get a feeling for sentence writing.
Tomorrow—final homework help for sentences. Thanks for joining us!
by Donna | Mar 31, 2011
After a student is reading well (and sometimes even before if things are not quite taught in order), he will start learning to write. Remember this is not penmanship. Penmanship is penning words. Writing is putting words together to form sentences. Sentences are then put together to form paragraphs. And paragraphs are put together to design essays, reports, and stories.
A student can learn to write sentences either by writing them himself or by dictating to you and having you pen the sentences for him. Either way, here are some “sentence writing tips”:
- The CAVES acronym shows that a sentence must contain five parts: Capital; All makes sense; Verb; End mark; Subject. You can use this with your child as he writes sentences to evaluate if he truly has written sentences or just a group of words. (If he doesn’t fully understand the subject-verb part, ask him if his sentence has someone or something that it is about. And that someone or something doing or being something (verb). He doesn’t even have to know the terminology to see if the subject or verb is missing from a sentence.
- The other two “easily visible” part of CAVES—capital and end mark—can be spotted quickly by your student as you ask him for each one.
- The last one, All makes sense, is best discovered orally (both now and in writing for years to come). This is because what a person thinks he wrote (and reads silently) is not always what he truly wrote. Thus, if he reads something silently, he will often read in his head what he meant to write, not what he actually wrote. If he reads it aloud, he will “hear” it. (Incidentally, we use this “hear” your errors approach in our writing books for high schoolers as well—not just for individual sentence writing.)
- If he is learning to write sentences and feels at a loss as to what to write, point out the speaking-writing connection to him by dialoguing:
Student: I can’t think of anything to write.
Teacher/Parent: What did you do today?
Student: school
Teacher/Parent: Say it in a complete sentence with “I” as the subject.
Student: I went to school.
Write this down for him, showing him once again that the written word is simply the spoke word written down.
More homework help for early writing tomorrow. Happy learning!
by Donna | Mar 25, 2011
We have talked at length about what a sentence contains:
C apital
A ll makes sense
V erb
E nd mark
S ubject
CAVES!
Again, most people have trouble witht the A one–All makes sense. When a “sentence” doesn’t make sense, it is often because it is not a sentence at all, but it is a phrase or a clause.
We are going to talk in detail about phrases and clauses in the upcoming weeks because we are going to talk a lot about sentence structure–openers, simple sentences, compound sentences, etc.
So…a little “phrase and clause” lesson is in order first:
1. Phrase–
a. Group of words
b. Group of words that is not a sentence
c. Group of words that is not a sentence and does not usually contain a subject and a verb (though may seem to have one or the other)
d. There are various types of phrases–the one that people are most familiar with is the prepositional phrase–begins with a preposition and ends with the object of the preposition:
i. over the clouds
ii. into the clouds
iii. around the clouds
iv. within the clouds
v. under the clouds
2. Clause
a. Group of words
b. Group of words that might or might not be a sentence
c. Group of words that contains a subject and a verb
d. Two kinds of clauses
i. Independent clause–also called a sentence
ii. Dependent clause–also called a subordinate clause
Don’t despair! These are not as complicated as they sound! You write with them all the time–but I hope to help you recognize them and punctuate them correctly in sentences–over the next few weeks!
Happy writing!
by Donna | Feb 27, 2011
In the sentences provided, highlight the main subjects.
Hint: The main subject is usually one of the first few words of a sentence!
1. Sickness is caused by different things.
2. Some animals carry sicknesses. (You may have indicated the one-word subject animals or the describer with the one-word subject.)
3. People can get sick from them.
4. Other diseases are in the air.
5. People breathe them in.
6. Then they get sick.
7. People would get sick less often if they would stay clean.
8. Children need to learn to wash their hands frequently.
- People can use anti-bacterial soap.
- We can “wash away germs.”
