Sentence Elaboration with Prepositional Phrases

This lesson is designed for students who write short choppy sentences. In this lesson, students will learn how to write more elaborated, complex sentences by adding prepositional phrases and clauses.

A lesson plan for grades 3–4 English Language Arts

By DPI Writing Strategies

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Related pages

• Word Bank: The Word Bank provides students with a classroom resource for "researching" the correct spelling of words that students want or need to use in their writing on a daily basis.

Related topics

• Learn more about English language arts.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• add prepositional phrases and clauses to a simple sentence.
• correctly use commas to punctuate the complex sentences they create.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

1 Hours

Materials/resources

• Overhead transparency of sample story, “A Day at the Park” (attached: pdf | rtf)
• Sentence strips

Technology resources

Overhead Projector

Pre-activities

None.

Activities

Modeling/Minilesson:

1. Put transparency of sample story on the overhead. Read the sample story to students.
2. Ask the students to react to the story. How did it sound? What did you notice about it?
3. Explain to the students that many times, weak stories are full of very short, choppy sentences. One way writers can make these stories stronger is to learn how to compose more elaborated sentences.

Elaborated Sentences:

4. Print a skeletal sentence on a sentence strip. Ask students to suggest prepositional phrases and clauses that could be added by answering the questions where, when, how, and why? Record the phrases on sentence strips. For example:

5. Experiment with sentence order by rearranging the sentence strips. Have students decide which order makes the clearest sentence. Encourage variety in sentence patterns.

Guided Practice:

6. In pairs or small groups, give each team of students 7 sentence strips. Have them write a subject on one strip and a predicate on a second strip. Ask student to expand their short sentence by adding prepositional phrases and clauses that answer the questions where, when, how, and why? Write the clauses on their remaining sentence strips. Rearrange the clauses within the sentence and add commas where needed.

Independent Practice:

7. Ask the students to expand a short sentence in one of their writing pieces by adding prepositional phrases and clauses. Have students share their elaborated sentences with partners.

Assessment

Can students:

• add prepositional phrases and clauses to simple sentences?
• correctly use commas to punctuate the complex sentences they create?

Supplemental information

Attachment:

A Day at the Park: pdf | rtf

Related websites

N/A

Comments

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