How to Improve the Structure of Sentences
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Teaching students to vary the word order that they use in their sentences to add interest and variety is a skill that you can model as you support your students in their growth as budding writers. Of course, sentence fluency is one of the effective traits that good writers develop to improve their ability to communicate. Mover and Shaker lessons support this particular expertise as they show students how to modify sentences to shake things up a bit and move words around. It gives them the power to make important decisions that enhance their ability to effectively communicate with their readers. As your students grow in their revision skills they will improve the content of their writing with better word choice and improved sentence structure. Our Mover and Shaker lessons are all about improving the structure of sentences as students think critically about word order.
Here is an example of how Mover and Shaker lessons unfold:
The student writes their revised sentence from their Sentence Blueprint. (To review a Sentence Blueprint lesson, click here.)
The adjectives that describe the subject are moved from in front of the subject to after the subject noun which they modify.
Commas are placed around the adjectives.
This improves the sentence fluency by adding interest and variety to the sentence format.
As you teach your students all of the various Mover and Shaker lessons you will be giving them tools they can use throughout their future college and career choices. You will be expanding their understanding of how the use of word order can assist them in emphasizing various points in their sentences. Additionally, it expands their learning from not only understanding the effective use of word order in sentences, but to also grow in the realization of how word order is successfully utilized in the overall composition. Why not give our Mover and Shaker lessons a try to see how they add some variety to the writing of your students?
