Editing for Sound Sentences Editing for Sound Sentences! Take out all of your materials and write the sentence below on a post-it or notecard. Write a descriptive sentence about one of the animals in these memes. After students write a sentence and share it out, ask them how they knew what they wrote was a sentence. Materials Green highlighter Red, blue, black pens RWNotebook and folder
Now, color-code your sentence. Nouns Adjectives Verbs Adverbs The dog viciously ambushed the package.
Chances are you wrote in a complete sentence. A complete sentence contains: At least one subject and one verb It must form a complete thought
A subject tells…. Who or what the sentence is all about The subject always contains a noun The dog resisted bath time in the most creative ways. Subject of the sentence
The main verb or verb phrase of the sentence… Tells what the subject is doing The dog resisted bath time in the most creative ways. Subject of the sentence verb
But, we don’t always write in complete sentences. Sometime we write in fragments A sentence fragment: Is MISSING a subject, verb, or does not convey a complete thought
Other times, we write in run-ons. Our sentences go on and on and on! A run-on sentence: Multiple sentences are put together WITHOUT the proper punctuation or connectors.
To fix fragments you can… A lot of us write with sentence fragments and run-ons during drafting – our brains are going faster than our pencils To fix fragments you can… Combing fragments or a fragment with a complete sentence Adding commas between fragment if they form a complete idea Adding joining words: and, but, or, because Adding transition words: but then, and then, so next Add the information necessary to make it a complete thought
To fix run-on you can… Make separate sentences by separating each complete sentence within your run-on. We arrived early. No one was at the Halloween party yet. WARNING – using this strategy too much gives you many small and choppy sentences in your writing. Combine sentences with purposeful joining words (and, but, while, after, since, because, though, as) We arrived early, and no one was at the party yet. Combine the complete sentences within the run-on with a semi-colon. We arrived early; no one was at the Halloween party yet.
Let’s Look at Our Class Notes Highlight the strategies for each type of sentence error Page 1: sentence fragments Page 2: run-on sentences Let’s tape our precise language and editing for sound sentence notes in the green section of our notebook!
Partner Practice Look at the partner practice page! Using your notes as a guide, try to edit the student paragraphs to fix sentence fragments and run on sentences.
Writing Time Go back to your draft and look to see if you can edit any sentences. Do you see any sentence fragments? Do you see any run-ons? Does each sentence have a subject and a verb? If you finish this, go back to a revision strategy and continue working on your draft. REMEMBER – do what works best for YOU as a writer