Why Sentences?

There are so many things to teach when teaching writing, and perhaps the best teaching is giving students opportunities to write and to read. Some of my seventh grade students come to me writing fluent, flowing, effective sentences. Others don't have enough of confidence and skills to get what they could say onto paper. I'd like to help both types of students -- the more proficient to expand their repertoires and to see that sentence revision can increase the clarity and power of their writing, and for the kids who lack sentence skills, I would like to open up to them their own potential for written expression.