Secondary ELA teachers had the opportunity to attend a writing-focused professional development on October 10 with Dr. Jennifer Holling. Participants discussed the importance of students’ understanding of sentence structure through the explicit teaching of grammar skills. Dr. Holling shared an engaging, interactive strategy to do just that. The only materials needed are colored index cards or colored strips of paper. Students work in groups to complete the following:
- 2 blue index cards – two singular nouns and two plural nouns (one word per side)
- 2 pink index cards – two verbs in present tense and two verbs in past tense (one word per side)
- 2 green index cards – four adjectives (one word per side)
- 2 yellow index cards – four adverbs (one word per side)
- 2 purple index cards – two prepositional phrases that refer to time and two prepositional phrases that refer to location (one phrase per side)
After completing each segment, cards are shuffled amongst groups so that each group has a different set of words than the ones they created. Finally, groups use the cards to generate two complete sentences, adding articles and punctuation as necessary. Groups share sentences aloud. *This activity should be scaffolded appropriately based on student levels, working towards building more complex sentences over time.*
Please contact your ELA IC or Brandi Morley if you have any questions.