Super-sizing sentences in the primary grades
Elaine Krause from Jackson Elementary (Valparaiso, IN) is a first grade teacher who loves increasing the vocabulary and sentence length of her young writers using the “super sentence” approach outlined by Joy Evans in her resource book, Write a Super Sentence.
When her students are ready to beef-up their simple sentences, Elaine uses this as an opportunity to introduce parts of speech laminated into mini-posters. Elaine asks her students to add key word phrases to their original sentences in order to add detail and to super-size them.
For example, the original sentence may have read, “The pig ate corn.” After super-sizing, it may read, “A pink pig ate crushed corn from the feeder all day.”
Elaine has found that this activity not only translates into their everyday writing, but it has been a powerful way to work on developing their vocabulary and word choice too.