This extends the previous post where I provided a simple activity for students to play around with sentence structure and craft. All of this stuff builds on the ideas I wrote about in The Art of the Sentence. This activity adds a layer of complexity and creativity through the range of phrases students could choose. You will find the resource at the end of this post.
The activity has a list of participle phrases and their punctuation to be used as an opener of a sentence, a closer to the sentence, or a interrupter of the subject and verb. The images below show the openers and interrupter participle phrases.
Below are the main clauses – which you would use with the opener and closer phrases. The second image of the main noun and verb enables students to flexibly create their own interrupters using the participle phrases. You should be able to get some interesting combinations with this activity.
Here is the what I would generally do with this activity. The first focus on the opener and closer structures. This limits the choices and students are only dealing with a few strips of paper/laminated cards or digital artefacts. When students have created some combinations and shared them, continue to reinforce the language conventions and the discuss the impact of the different choices.
Then add complexity to the task and distribute the interrupters, main noun and verb phrases. There are a range of different possibilities students will come up with. The image below shows some possible combinations.
Improving student literacy 