Deborah Dean, in her book Strategic Writing provides these "Three overriding principles"(157):
1. ". . . I have to be engaged. I have to be interested in sentences and what they do and how they work. . . . I have to be the instigator and the example for my students."
2. ". . . this work with sentences shouldn't be about right and wrong but about what effects different structures and patterns have on meaning and on audience."
[These are Level 1* writing activities, sometimes moving on to level 2, but usually not graded. In her essay, "Sentence Combining: Building Skills through Reading and Writing," Dr. Dean adds that "Talk and reflection are essential."
3. ". . .What we do with sentences has to connect to what students are currently writing. . . . "Now I try to use effective sentences from models of the same genre my students are reading and writing so that structures match in genre, tone, and topic."
A suggestion from James Gray, as reported by Paul Butler:
"Eventually, students look at longer passages in order to see sentences used in context. According to Gray, this is the most important step in the process. "(in Butler)
And I add my own suggestions:
1. Consistency and "persistency": As a teacher you need to involve your students in sentence work on a daily basis over a long period of time.
That leads to
2. Variety: You can't do the same thing every day. You can be doing similar things with variations that keep up interest. Students tend to be comfortable within a routine, but more than one strategy can be used within that routine. See the next post -- on strategies -- for lists of strategies that fit under and extend on sentence imitation and sentence combining.
3. I must add an "amen" to Deborah Dean's insistence that the teacher must be enga
ged (interested) in these activities. Like Dr. Dean, I love finding and collecting those gems that are beautifully crafted sentences. And I genuinely enjoy trying to imitate them, and reading and hearing the imitations my students create. I became much more interested in sentence imitation and combining when I realized I could go out and find sentences I love, and I could involve students in digging up sentence treasures.Photo from http://pro.corbisimages.com/
*Deborah Dean is also the source -- for me-- of the idea of levels of writing. "Level One writing is writing that is less formal, more spontaneous. It is writing that doesn't go through the entire writing process. . . . usually graded for participation or ideas or following directions."
(Adapted from Meyer and Meyer, Teaching English in Middle and Secondary Schools)
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