Explicitly Teaching Sentence Patterning

In order to have a classroom of syntactical ninjas, I explicitly teach Strunk & White's Rule # 18 (the concept that there are 12 difference ways to cobble together a sentence ... and further ... that there are 20 different ways to pattern each sentence type).

Sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty easy.

To help students foster their voice, rhythm, flow ... I give them ample opportunity to experiment at sentence level.

And in turn ... what happens is you get a classroom of writers that can make some pretty nifty decisions on paper.

Today's video concludes my video series on the 20 sentence patterns.

I model five times how to construct all 20 patterns in a ViewMaster lesson, and then your students follow my lead.

Patterns 16 - 20

Patterns 11 - 15

Patterns 6 - 10

Patterns 1 - 5

Happy teaching and happy writing!