[MOSAIC] Sentence Combining

Thu Jul 5 10:37:52 EDT 2007

And to me, this is a situation in which grammar blends so smoothly into mini
lessons for writing workshop.  It has such an authentic purpose.

Lori

On 7/5/07 6:42 AM, "RASINSKI, TIMOTHY" <trasinsk at kent.edu> wrote:

> I love sentence combining and think it has been woefully neglected in our
> classrooms.   Here's some proof:
>  
> See the Journal of Educational Psychology, 2005, Vol 97, pp 43-54.
> Title: The effects of peer-assisted sentence-combining instruction on the
> writing performance of more and less skilled young writers.
> Authors: Bruce Saddler and Steve Graham
>  
>> From the abstract  'The authors examined whether instruction designed to
>> improve sentence-construction skills was beneficial for more and less skilled
>> 4th-grade writers.  In comparison with peers receiving grammar instruction,
>> students in the exp treatment became more adept at combining simpler
>> sentences into more complex sentences.  For the exp students, the sentence
>> combining skills produced improved story writing as well as the use of these
>> skills when revising."
>  
> Timothy Rasinski 
> 404 White Hall 
> Kent State University
> Kent, OH  44242 
> 330-672-0649 
> Cell -- 330-962-6251
> FAX  330-672-2025
> trasinsk at kent.edu
> informational website: www.timrasinski.com
> professional development DVD:  http://www.roadtocomprehension.com/
> <https://exchange.kent.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.roadtocomprehe
> nsion.com/>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: mosaic-bounces at literacyworkshop.org on behalf of thomas
> Sent: Thu 7/5/2007 8:43 AM
> To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group
> Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Sentence Combining
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/4/07 10:15 PM, "kimberlee hannan" <mrshannan6th at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
>> She said it was mainly a revision strategy, but I can see it being used for
>> a whole lot more than that.
>> 
>> She took a long drawn paragraph from Across Five Aprils.  She broke it down
>> into its smallest pieces.  We combined it together and discussed the vision
>> we were getting as we dealt with each part.  Finally we read the actual
>> paragraph.  Not only was our sentence very close to the actual author's, the
>> paragraph made complete sense.  She said if we did that with shared novels
>> before we got to the complicated ones, they made much more sense to the kids
>> and they are familiar.
>> 
>> I thought there would be books about this strategy.  I moved since the CATE
>> conference and the paperwork is in a box somewhere on the back patio.
>> Hopefully, I will find it before may daughters inherit it.
>> Kim
>> 
> There is actually research that shows sentence combining does have an impact
> on writing - not huge - but an impact nevertheless.  I did just what your
> prof did with my 5/6 graders.  We would do usually one paragraph (or several
> long sentences) from a novel we were reading.  I would look for interesting
> sentence structure possibilities.  It was a great way  to discuss not just
> simple grammar issues and choices and punctuation involved in putting
> sentences together in particular ways, but also the author's style.
> 
> I also did one other paragraph (or several sentences) - also interesting
> ones - where my students created their own sentences using the skeleton
> grammatical structures of the given sentences.  My students loved this
> activity, maybe even more than the sentence combining.  I long long ago read
> a piece of research by James Christie which showed that being able to put
> together (compose) particular sentence structures had an impact then on
> being able to read them. His examples tended to be more like the "imitation"
> I just described than the sentence combining but I think it would work the
> same way.  Primary teachers have long been doing this with variations on
> texts. "If I were in charge of the world, ......"  and kids write their own
> variations.  And we've been talking about that with music/songs!
> 
> They also loved then running into these spots in the story.  I think both
> had an impact on their comprehension (a really close reading obviously) and
> their writing. I saw a particularly big impact on their writing.  They no
> longer settled for simple or compound sentences or even for adjective or
> adverb clauses.  Rather they tended to use more sophistical structures like
> nominative absolutes, appoisitives,  and so on - that kind of piling on of
> details in sentences through phrases that is so much more characteristic of
> sophisticated writing. I definitely didn't over do it. Most work on writing
> came through writing workshop and most reading through reading - reading
> workshop in all its glory!
> 
> Sally
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Lori Jackson
District Literacy Coach & Mentor
Todd County School District
Box 87
Mission SD  57555

http:www.tcsdk12.org
ph. 605.856.2211

Literacies for All Summer Institute
"Literate Lives:  A Human Right"
July 12-15, 2007
Louisville, Kentucky

http://www.ncte.org/profdev/conv/wlu