Focus Plan



Focus Plan

Texarkana Independent School District

|GRADING PERIOD: | 1st 6 Weeks |PLAN CODE: |W7.1.4 |

|Teacher: |Ables |Course/subject: |English Language Arts |

|Grade(s): |7 |Time allotted for instruction: |4 class periods |

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|Title: |Developing Better Sentences |

|Lesson TOPIC: |Using the sentence combining strategy to develop fluency and variety in writing |

|TAKS Objective: |Objective 1 |

| |The student will, within a given context, produce an effective composition for a specific |

| |purpose. |

|FoCUS TEKS and Student Expectation: |(7.18) Writing/writing processes. The student selects and uses writing processes for |

| |self-initiated and assigned writing. The student is expected to: |

| |(C) revise selected drafts by adding, elaborating, deleting, combining, and rearranging text |

| |(4-8). |

|Supporting TEKS and Student Expectation: |(7.17) Writing/grammar/usage. The student applies standard grammar and usage to communicate |

| |clearly and effectively in writing. The student is expected to: |

| |(A) write in complete sentences, varying the types such as compound and complex sentences, and |

| |use appropriately punctuated independent and dependent clauses (7-8); |

| |(B) use conjunctions to connect ideas meaningfully (4-8). |

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|Concepts |Enduring Understandings/Generalizations/Principles |

| |The student will understand that |

|Processes |Writing is a process that includes prewriting, drafting, editing, and revising. |

|Proofreading |Effective writers examine their work for correct sentence structure. |

|Sentence structure |The effective use of a variety of sentence types makes writing more interesting to the reader. |

|Sentence combining |Sentence combining, the strategy of joining short sentences into longer, more complex sentences, is an |

| |effective method for helping writers to develop fluency and variety in their own writing style. |

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[pic]I. Sequence of Activities (Instructional Strategies)

A. Focus/connections

The teacher will hand out page one only of Focus Activity: I Am and have students answer the six listed questions. No instruction should be given other than the directions for the activity. After students have answered the six questions, the teacher will hand out part two of the activity and show students how to combine the six sentences they have written into one complete sentence. As a final activity, students may use the blank bordered page to create a poem from the complete sentence. The poems could be published by posting them on the walls of the classroom.

B. Instructional activities

(demonstrations, lectures, examples, hands-on experiences, role play, active learning experience, modeling, discussion, reading, listening, viewing, etc.)

1. Objectives: The teacher should explain that the students have just used an effective strategy for revising sentence structure and for creating more interesting complex sentences. This lesson will focus on the strategy of sentence combining.

2. Lecture/Discussion/Group Practice: By using Sentence Combining: Transparency 1, the teacher will illustrate how published writers create complex sentences from combining simple sentences. The teacher should expose only the kernel sentences on the transparency. As a group, the class will combine all eight sentences into one complex sentence. After recording the sentence generated by the class, the teacher will expose the sentence written by the published author and lead a discussion comparing the two sentences. The teacher should emphasize that writers have many syntactic choices and that there is never only one way to compose a sentence.

C. Guided activity or strategy

By using Sentence Combining: Transparencies 2 and 3, the teacher will provide guided practice for the sentence combining strategy. After each set of kernel sentences is exposed, the teacher will allow time for students to individually create new sentences. The teacher will circulate through the classroom, monitoring student performance and answering questions. Before proceeding to the next transparency, the teacher will ask for volunteers to write their sample sentences on the board or on a transparency and to discuss the choices they made with their class.

D. Accommodations/modifications

E. Enrichment

II. STUDENT PERFORMANCE

A. Description

Students will complete the two exercises from Student Activity: Sentence Combining. After the exercises are graded and returned to the students, the teacher should use the transparency The Way the Author Wrote It to illustrate the original sentences. The teacher also could ask for student volunteers to share different combinations of the same sentences.

B. Accommodations/modifications

For students requiring accommodations, the teacher could reduce the number of kernel sentences to be combined into one sentence. Students could create compound sentences rather than complex sentences. Instruction should emphasize the use of a comma and a conjunction to combine two simple sentences. Another accommodation could be to select only those kernel sentences which would require the insertion of adjectives.

C. Enrichment

For students who demonstrate mastery of the sentence combining strategy, the teacher should focus on the development of the writer’s voice or style. To do this, the teacher could provide samples of writings by well-known authors and have the students analyze the elements by which those writers have demonstrated their own voice and have established their own styles.

iii. Assessment of Activities

A. Description

Students will earn two grades over the lesson activities. The first grade will be determined based on the focus activity and the student activity. The second grade will be determined based on the multimedia project.

B. Rubrics/grading criteria

Grading criteria is provided on Rubric: Developing Better Sentences.

C. Accommodations/modifications

D. Enrichment

E. Sample discussion questions

1. What is another way these sentences could be combined?

2. By combining these sentences this way, is the meaning changed?

3. How would you punctuate this complex sentence?

IV. TAKS Preparation

A. Transition to TAKS context

On the TAKS, the evaluation of objective 1 will be based on the student’s entire essay. The teacher should provide opportunities for students to develop well-constructed sentences before they progress to the development of paragraphs and then to entire essays.

B. Sample TAKS questions

TAKS objective 1 is assessed through a composition the student writes in response to a prompt. The open-ended nature of the prompt allows students to address the prompt as they choose as long as their composition is in standard English prose. (Note: Poetry is not an acceptable form of response.) Students’ ability to use their own experience and perspective helps them effectively express their ideas about the topic.

Sample writing prompts from previous Grade 7 Writing TAKS are as follows:

• Spring 2003 TAKS: “Write a composition about a time when something unexpected happened.”

• Spring 2004 TAKS: “Write a composition about trying to do something you thought was difficult.”

V. Key Vocabulary

Sentence kernel, sentence combining, lot (as in “group”), salmon (color), hoisted

VI. Resources

A. Textbook

Glencoe Literature: The Reader’s Choice, Course 2 (Theme 1 Unit, pages 1-111)

B. Supplementary materials

• Focus Activity: I Am

• Sentence Combining: Transparencies 1-3

• Student Activity: Sentence Combining

• Student Activity Transparency: The Way the Author Wrote It

• Rubric: Developing Better Sentences

C. Technology

To reinforce the theme of What I Am, What I Want to Be, the teacher will assign a variation of the multimedia project, A Self-Portrait (Glencoe Literature: The Reader’s Choice, Course 2, p. 3). To create a multimedia self-portrait, students will use the internet to collect photographs of people, places, or things that could be used as symbols of their own lives. Students should consider their experiences, their interests and hobbies, their family and friends, and their career goals. Students should consider not only who they are now, but also who they want to be. For example, if students have a love for music, they could locate a picture of a musical instrument or a favorite singer. If students want to be a dancer, they could locate a photograph of a ballet star. For each collected photograph, the student should write an explanation of how this photo represents his/her own life.

After completing the multimedia project, the students could combine this pictorial self-portrait with the poem written for the focus activity and post these in the classroom.

VII. FOLLOW UP ACTIVITIES

(reteaching, cross-curricular support, technology activities, next lesson in sequence, etc.)

Teachers can design their own sentence-combining activities by using short sentences from student writing or other appropriate sources. For example, teachers who notice many choppy sentences in students' writing can place these sentences on an overhead for all their students to read. Teachers can then ask different students to combine orally the short sentences in a variety of ways.

By participating in oral and written sentence-combining activities, students better understand the ways in which sentence structure, usage, and punctuation affect meaning.

Cross-curricular support: The multimedia project described in this lesson could be completed through instruction in technology applications.

Next lesson in sequence: Writing Workshop: What I Am, What I Want to Be

VIII. Teacher Notes

This lesson introduces the theme of What I Am, What I Want to Be, theme one in Glencoe Literature: The Reader’s Choice. Student activities in this lesson also are based on reading selections in the Glencoe unit. Although this lesson may be taught independently of the reading text, it is recommended that the reading and writing lessons be integrated.

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