Transcript SIMPLE SENTENCES

My hair wakes up stupid.
--Tony Johnston, Any Small Goodness (2003)
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What do you notice about this sentence?
Is this a sentence?
My sweat smells like peanut butter.
--Wendy Mass, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of
Life (2006)
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What do you notice?
Is this a sentence?
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(teacher model ~think through a sentence)
 Who or what smells like peanut butter?
 What does the subject – my sweat – do?
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Now we are going to play a game!!!! Please,
please control your excitement!!!!
The game is called: “Is It or Isn’t It?” – the
game where you decide what’s a sentence and
what’s a poser.
Whoooo can help me review what questions
are necessary to ask to determine if we have a
sentence or not?
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Who or what did or is something? (subject)
What did they do? or What are they? (verb)
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He paced. (teacher model thinking first! Control yourselves, you’ll get your chance!)
And mosquitoes.
Stacy gasped.
Eric stirred.
And gnats.
Another corpse.
Jeff shrugged.
Amy turned.
To look.
Jeff nodded.
Jeff sighed.
---Scott Smith, The Ruins (2006)
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There is one thing for sure, you won’t come
across a two-word sentence every time you
read.
So as you do read and come across them from
time to time, make sure you put them in your
writer’s notebook and add them to our list.
Remember a simple sentence, even in it’s
simplest of terms must have a subject and
verb.
Stone breaks.
Water quakes.
Magma glows.
Volcano blows.
--Lola M. Schaefer, An Island Grows (2006)
Notice the lively verbs she uses to describe how
an island is formed!!! They make a world of
difference in simple sentences.
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Take out a sheet of paper, put the proper heading
and title it “Simple Sentences.”
List 12 to 15 terms (science related, or even sports…)
Circle or check the strongest terms, usually 8 to 10.
Decide on an organizational tool – chronological
order, alphabetical, steps in a process, largest to
smallest, general to specific, etc.
Order the terms.
Add a verb to each term.
Select three to four two-word sentence you can
expand on.
Make sidebars for in-depth explanation.
 Model on next slide….
Sun shines.
Water heats.
Vapors rise.
Clouds build.
Rain falls.
Lakes swell.
Oceans fill.
Sun shines.
And the cycle goes on and on.
The cycle all starts with the sun
heating up water on the
earth’s surface. When the
water gets hot enough it
turns from a liquid to a gas
and rises adding to the
clouds in the sky. When the
clouds get too heavy, so to
speak, the vapor turns back
to a liquid and falls back to
Earth adding water back to
our lakes and oceans. And
the sun starts the cycle all
over again.
A player passes.
Ball flies.
Girls holler.
Cameras click.
An agent approaches.
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This can be done with
any subject you can
come up with enough
significant terms for.
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Pass out hand out of excerpt from Fourth
Grade Rats, by Jerry Spinelli (1991)
This excerpt is about a kid who is too neat
and perfect. He is transforming into a fourthgrade rat by messing up his room.
He started with his bookshelf. He pulled out four or five volumes
from his encyclopedia and threw them on the floor. Then he
tossed out a couple of comic books and a National
Geographic.
He opened every drawer in his dresser. He flipped out
stuff from each one – socks, underwear, shirts. They landed all
over. He kicked the wastebasket over. He dragged his dirty
clothes hamper from the closet and dumped it on the floor. He
charged into his desk. Pencils and papers and rubber bands
went flying. And the only think he didn’t do was spit.
By now, you could hardly see the floor. He stood in the
middle, turning, nodding, smiling. “Yeah. Now it’s my room.”
And he wasn’t done. We ordered a pizza, and when he
got down to the crust of each slice, he tossed it over his
shoulder. One landed in his underwear drawer. The pizza box
he flipped like a Frisbee against the wall.
--Jerry Spinelli, Fourth Grade Rats (1991)
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Put copy under doc cam…
I think we can learn a lot from two-word sentences.
What I learned as a writer is that verbs make a
sentence in more than one way. Yes, you have to
have one to have a sentence, but we can make our
sentences even more powerful by using active verbs.
We will be highlighting all the active verbs we see.
I want you finish highlighting the rest of the active
verbs and any sentences you might want to revise.
Let’s do the verbs in pink and the sentences in
yellow.
I want you to go back to a piece of writing in your
writer’s notebook you want to reenter.
I want you to work on the left side of the page
revising your writing and incorporating strong simple
sentences into it.