Teach students how to omit clichés from their writing

A sign of a more sophisticated writer is one who can write with strong description, interesting similes and metaphors. Unfortunately, in an attempt to include more description and imagery, students often pull from a bank of overused, voiceless and predictable clichés.    read more...

Use grammar to improve sentence fluency

Sentence fluency is a difficult trait to master. Because we often speak in short choppy fragments or long, gangly run-ons, students bring those habits into their writing. They write how they speak. It doesn't take long for students to realize if they just write short, choppy, simple sentences, they will be grammatically correct. Unfortunately, this creates a lack of sentence length variety.    read more...

Boost writers’ sentence fluency with specific strategies

Sentence fluency is the hardest trait to master. It's more than just knowing how to write complete and grammatically correct sentences. Fluency requires that the variety of sentences flow together easily, smoothly, and musically.    read more...

Stretch sentences with the Dice Game

Ready to push your students to elongate their sentences? Ready for students to intermix their short and choppy sentences with longer, meatier, sentences? With the Dice Game, you can help students supersize their sentences.    read more...

Stronger literature responses with the 6 Traits

Writing about your reading is a typical expectation in middle school writing. But beyond a summary of the reading, Language Arts teachers often work to develop students’ ability to respond to the literature. This might include drawing connections among texts, analyzing the text for figurative language, critiquing the text for a particular characteristic, using the text to support a specific opinion, etc. But what do you do when students repeatedly write weak literature responses? How do you elicit stronger ones?    read more...

Fall walk sentences

Every word counts… That's what fifth grade teacher John Stoffel pushes his writers to understand. He sets this tone early in the school year with his annual "Fall-Walk Single Sentence" contest.    read more...

Super strategies for stretching sentences

First grade teacher Ruth Leman (Hoagland Elementary School) has gotten her students to beef up their writing by challenging them to "super size" their sentences. First she acquired a large and small fry holder from three different fast food restaurants to use as visual aids.    read more...

Super-sizing sentences in the primary grades

First grade teacher Elaine Krause (Jackson Elementary, Valparaiso, IN) loves increasing the vocabulary and sentence length of her young writers using the “super sentenceâ€� approach outlined by Joy Evans in her resource book, “Write a Super Sentence.â€�    read more...

Adding comparisons and similes to strengthen word choice

Vivid and unique phrasing sometimes comes in figurative language use, like similes. After reading Dr. Seuss' Many Colored Days or Jane Cabrera's Cat's Colors, second grade teacher Linda Rodenbarger (from Portage Schools) then discusses with her students the power of including comparisons in their writing.    read more...

Hearing punctuation

Many teachers associate speed or reading rate with fluency. That’s true, if a student reads too slowly or too quickly, he will struggle to make meaning. But another key component to reading fluency is how students break phrases and word groupings among sentences.    read more...