Super Sentences

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Home : 2002 : April : 4

Super Sentences
By Robin

This isn't individual lists, but it's something that's worked in my second-grade class to address the difference in spelling skills without really complicating the management of this area of the curriculum. I give a spelling
pretest every Monday, and students who get at least eleven of twelve words correct have the option of doing Super Sentence homework. A sentence with challenging words (this week's was 'The carnivorous organism sauntered over to the tributary to get imbibe the clear beverage flowing through it.') is given to students, and on Monday they record dictionary definitions, Tuesday write a

sentence for each word, Wednesday make a word search, illustration, crossword, or other teacher-approved 'creative' assignment, and on Thursday they 'translate' the sentence (along with complete the regularly assigned lanuage arts or math review). Parents love the challenge, kids enjoy the work, and I've started to see these words cropping up in their regular writing! These kids are given an A as a spelling grade because they've proven that they can spell the grade-level words (a form of curriculum compacting), but are quizzed on the super sentence vocab anyway. There's a Super Sentence book, I believe, but I use the thesaurus on my computer to create the ones I use in my class. Just thought I'd share the idea!