Teaching an “Inch Wide and a Mile Deep” Objective: Students group sentences which are given to them on strips of paper into piles based on some criterion or contrast. (CBO) Goal: Whole class, group/partner, or internal conversations about the sentences. These inputs equal “linguistic spillover”—what they read now spills over into future writing. 1 For PSAT practice, sentence sorts will involve looking at sentences for their syntactical elements.

PSAT Five basic grammatical concepts tested on the PSAT according to The Princeton Review (2005). Verbs Nouns Pronouns Prepositions Other little things

Sentence Sort Choose sentences that represent the skills you want to discuss from text the students are reading. Working in groups or partners, students will “open sort,” putting the sentences in groups. The students must be prepared to explain why they categorized the sentences the way they did. Discuss and analyze sentences. What do the conversations sound like?

Extensions Students may imitate the writer’s sentences. After imitating and practicing these sentence types, students will be expected to use these types of sentences in their writing. The Sentence Sort can be adapted to whatever skills you need the students to study.

Grammar Practice Working in pairs or small groups, students help each other highlight all of the prepositional phrases in each sentence. Find the core sentence, checking for subject verb agreement.

1. Cambourne, Brian, The Whole Story, 1988, as quoted by Jeff Anderson in Mechanically Inclined, 2005.