Gateway+activities+for+Sentence+Combining

Below are various gateway activities for sentence combining to do with your students. Please refer to the Sentence Combining page for the evidence based research and rationale behind why sentence combining activities are so valuable.

media type="custom" key="23554290"

Twitter Chat


For students in the middle school grades, host a twitter chat about sentence combining. The teacher can post groups of sentences that can be combined. Have the students tweet their combinations. Then have a discussion with the students about their choices. It is also possible to have students create sentences and tweet them to see the responses they get.

Polling software:


Create an online poll where students are given two clauses. They are then given three or four choices of combined sentences. Students vote on which combined sentence is the most syntactically complex.

Use websites such as :



Another polling option is Poll Everywhere. Sites such as test allow students to use mobile devices when responding to survey questions. Students can text answers to a code given by the website and create charts/graphs of the correct answer.



I would like to thank Dr. Mark Hofer from the School of Education at The College of William and Mary for the following suggestions. Dr. Hofer spoke at the Summer 2013 Institute on 21st Century Composition at Fordham University. Dr. Hofer provided us the to the following resource during his presentation.

[]

This link provides suggestions on how teachers can integrate the TPACK model of instruction, Koehler and Mishra (2009), into their instructional planning. TPACK stands for Technology, Pedagogy, And Content Knowledge. The premise of the TPACK model is that technology can seamless fit into instruction as long as the technology is the "right fit" (Hofer, 2013).

Suggested Activities
**Printing Press Activity**: Using this online printing press, teachers can select different templates to write sentences on. Students can use the additional frames on the templates to fill in their combined sentences. In addition, many of the templates provide sections for inserting graphics or images. Students can then work together independently or in groups to combine sentences.

**Comic Strip Generating Software**: Students can generate comic book cells using one sentence per frame. They can then combine the sentences to make the characters have more complex dialog or more descriptive sentences. This is another engaging way to have students connect pictures to their writing.  Thank you to Sarah Kessler from Mashable.com for this list of resources. [] <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">**Digital Photography**: Students can use social media sites such as pinterest.com or instagram.com to take pictures around their classroom or at home. Next, have students add text in the form of one or two sentences to the first two frames. The third picture can have them combine sentences to create a more syntactically complex sentence. Posting on social media will require parental permission or have them post to a class created account. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">media type="custom" key="23566378" media type="custom" key="23566388" <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">**Concept Mapping Software**: Below are links to several free concept mapping websites. Each of these sites allows teachers to create sentence clauses. Students then would add bubbles/nodes/boxes showing how they would combine the sentences. <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">**Student Response Systems (Clickers):** If teachers have access to "clickers", they can create sentence clauses using the "clicker" software provided. After distributing the clickers, teachers can poll students to see how they would have combined sentences. Teachers can also gives students work time to create sentences or use sentences from student writing. This process also allows for informal assessment of students to ascertain if they are creating more syntactically complex sentences.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;"> media type="custom" key="23566382"

= <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 200%;">Online Resources for Sentence Combining   = <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">About half-way down the page is a link for sentence combining activities. Students can combine sentences, click on two different sentences that have been combined to pick the best one, or complete an online sentence combining quiz.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">This quiz developed by Pamela Bordas, MS, CCC-SLP, is a great way to have students try to figure out which conjunction is missing. You can have students look at the screen, write down how they would combine the sentences, and then check to see how the author combined the sentences.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The BBC has a wealth of resources about sentences. This link below is a fun way to introduce students to different types of sentence activities. Students can work on forming sentences, and combining sentences. You might need to review some vocabulary with the students since the game is from the UK. Also you get to listen to great British/Scottish accents while you play!!!

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">This game from Harcourt publishing helps students add conjunction words or punctuation in order to combine sentences.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The University of Missouri has compiled a list of websites of quizzes you can give your students to practice sentence combining.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">[]
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">This website provides a bubble game where students can work together to choose the word which best combines the sentences.

=<span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 190%; text-align: center;"> <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 170%;">Web-Based Lesson Plan/ <span style="color: #0000ff; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 170%;">Planning Resources   = <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The following four links will take you directly to different web-based lesson plans about sentence combining. Each of the websites comes from a research-based center of learning. The first two links are from the University of North Carolina and Yale University. The third link, Reading Rockets, is sponsored by the US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. The last link is from a report from the National Council of Teachers of English. When looking through the resources available on the web, I felt that these four websites gave standards based, research driven methods that will be helpful in establishing sentence combining routines in a classroom setting.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">[] [|http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/4/81.04.06.x.html#d] [] []