Title – Sentence Combining Relay

By – Sharon Taylor

Primary Subject – Language Arts

Grade Level – 6-8

Objective:

Students will improve their writing skills by practicing sentence combining.

Lesson:

Previous to this activity, teacher has instructed students on sentence combining and using variety in sentence beginnings.

Students are divided into teams (or groups) for this kinesthetic activity. Each team will have a section of the blackboard on which to write their sentences.

With 25 students, there would be five teams of five students.

Teams are situated in rows directly in front of their section of the board. (Chairs, without desks, should be placed directly behind another chair, so all students on one team are sitting in a row from front to back.) To maintain all students’ attention, it is best to use with classes of 25 students or less.

Teacher gives two simple sentences and instructs students to combine those sentences. The first student in the row goes to the board and attempts to combine the sentences. (Teacher will set amount of time given for each sentence.) Teacher judges the best sentence and awards a point to that team. For second round, the second student in each row goes to the board. Students may get to the board and pass if they wish, and the next student in the row will step up to do the sentence combining. If students appear to need assistance, teacher allows them to ask the rest of their team members for help. The difficulty of combining the sentences increases as more sentences (up to four or five) are used. Students in 6th, 7th & 8th grades enjoyed learning sentence combining through this activity as well as the cooperative effort that was required. With some humor and encouragement, students were inventive and creative at combining sentences.

Adaptation:

Activity could be adapted as follows: teacher could ask students to write simple sentence, compound sentence, complex sentences, or compound/complex sentences from a topic given.

Reward given to team who scored most points.

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Sharon Taylor

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