Sentences: Building and Self Editing

My students LOVE building sentences with hands-on materials. We are also expected to use activities that can show progress, that are rigorous and that cover many differentiate skills at one time.

During center time, we use lots of different word tiles, word blocks and word puzzles to build sentences.

Hands-On Practice

In addition to this manipulative word work task each day, here are some of the sentence building printables we’ve been doing in class to develop our skills through the school year.

I want my students to be independent with their sentence building, so for our centers and morning work, we use simple templates with many jobs to encourage skills that will transfer to their daily writing.

Jobs To Complete

Our daily practice printables practice the following core skills:

Read the words

Trace the words

Build the sentence

Print the sentence using proper formation

Self-Edit the capitals and punctuation

Draw to show comprehension

Peer edit with a friend

Students build a sentence with each page, but that is just the beginning of their task; they also edit using a simple checklist AND have a peer edit as well. This holds them accountable to finish, and increases confidence when they get to be the “expert” fixing up someone else’s work.

Literacy Skills Practiced

After some practice, I see this habit of self-editing transfer to other writing projects as well, such as journal writing and writer’s workshop stories.

Students begin to edit their own:

capitalization
random capitals
punctuation: periods and question marks
letter formation
space between words
backwards letters

We use the editable version to create our own sentences, too! It’s fun to work together to write funny sentences together and use the names of students in the class. This really increases engagement and they look forward to building the sentences!

 

DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH THE YEAR

As we move through the year, we move on to parts of speech. We focus on identifying nouns, adjectives and verbs within a sentence. Students have two options for each part of speech when building a sentence, which means students may create a sentence that is different than the person sitting next to them.

 

Spelling Patterns

Next, we move on to more complex spelling patterns.

For these more complex words, I also use matching sets of word/picture cards in my pocket charts and centers activities to reinforce the spelling patterns further.

Just to keep things fun and interesting, the checklist for the blends set is a bit different!

Students love creating a silly face as they self-edit their work! You can see the format on the page below.

 

Organization for the Full Year

Because I teach a multi-age class, I often use several of the sets at the same time to differentiate my instruction.

My lower grade students begin with basic sentences (set 1), while my higher grade students start with parts of speech (set 3). Because the format is so similar, it is easy to differentiate throughout the classroom.

You can make your own worksheets, or you can have all the worksheets we use through the entire year.

I have put together my entire year’s worth of worksheets organized by skills:

1.Sentence Building Kit 1  Sight words, number words, color words (click to read over 1000 reviews!)
2.Sentence Building Kit 2 Contractions, Quotation Marks and longer sentences
3.Sentence Building Kit 3 Parts of Speech – Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs
4.Sentence Builder  BUNDLE 1 Bundle 1 Full Year Set *Sets 1, 2, and 3 together PLUS EDITABLE PAGES

5.Sentence Building Kit 4 – Blends Sentences using words with blends
6.Sentence Building Kit 5 – Digraphs Sentences using words with digraphs
7.Sentence Building Kit 6 -Trigraphs and Compound Words includes word and picture cards
8.Sentence Builder Year Bundle 2  Bundle 2  *Sets 4, 5, and 6 together*

9.Sentence Kits 1-6 – Full Year BUNDLE – All 6 sets and editable pages!

The full year will last all year in your daily lessons, morning work, early finishers, writing centers, home practice, or even sub tubs as students become completely independent after the first few pages. It is available at a much reduced price.

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You can download a big pack of literacy activities by clicking the button below!

 

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