Offering students a variety of tools to use in their compositions will help keep them away from the same old same old, boring ideas being used over and over again. Students began by writing their main idea sentences for each paragraph, being sure to use sentence variety and word referents in their sentences, along with including the main idea blurb. Main ideas sentences for students preparing for their tests should include TWO main things - the main idea blurb and the topic restated creatively.
After students finished, we began developing the detail sentences to support the main ideas. They began implementing the tools we have given them to write well-elaborated detail sentences. Those strategies include Detail Generating Questions, Descriptions, Personal Anecdotes, and Flip the Sentence. If you are new to using empowering writers and would like to try out these strategies, click here to sign up for a FREE trial. All of these skills are included in the grade specific Expository, Opinion, Response to Text writing guides. Here is one of Empowering Writers' techniques used in adding sentence variety called Flip the Sentence as it is modeled in Mrs. Dixon's fourth-grade class. Then check out the student samples below!
Kylene
kreed@empoweringwriters.com
