Friday, April 4, 2014

Writing Compound Sentences Can be Fun!

To my surprise, we actually had fun writing, expanding and rearranging simple and compound sentences this week.  The factor that made it fun was that I told my second graders we were going to write like THIRD GRADERS. Since they're in second grade, anything third grade is super cool. 

Our first activity was creating this flip book:

 Under the first flap, we wrote the requirements of any sentence.  Then under each grade's flap, we wrote an example of a sentence from that grade level.  What we wrote for a 3rd grade sentence is actually a Common Core requirement for 2nd graders (L 2.1f), but my students get so excited when we talk about becoming third graders, so that's why I told them it's a third grade sentence. I thought it would motivate them to write compound sentences, and it sure did work.


We then practiced identifying who wrote different sentences and combined the two simple sentences to create a compound sentence.
If you want this worksheet, click here to download it for FREE.


Afterwards, I partnered my students with their writing buddy and they had to create an example of each type of sentence. They recorded their sentences on a sheet like this:
  
After they wrote each type of sentence, they brought it to me to check. If they wrote it correctly, I gave them a smiley.  If the sentence was incorrect, I had them correct it.


Last but not least, I made this anchor chart to go along with this lesson.

I hope you found some goodies to use in your own classroom. 
Thanks for stopping by. 

3 comments:

  1. Leah, that is such a good idea. All my 2nd graders are starting to get so excited for third grade. I am sure this would work with them too! Ha. I am going to be trying this soon. Thanks for sharing a great idea.

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  2. I can't wait to hear how it goes. My kiddos are soo excited about becoming 3rd graders too. Enjoy.

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  3. I love that idea - I think I will use it as a review for the beginning of next year! One of the best ways to motivate my students is telling them they are doing older kid level work - they eat it up!

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