7-up Sentences

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7-up Sentences
By Kate

These extended/perfect sentences come from Wilda Storm's Writing Program. I'll try to give you a brief description. You start by telling students that from now on every sentence they write must have at least 7 words in
it and be perfect. Then you pair students and give them a boring, short sentence like: The snake moved. The pairs add adjectives, prepositional phrases, and replace boring verbs to make a new sentence with 7 words or more. Ex. The striped, poisonous cobra slithered through the tall grass. They write it on the bottom of a large piece of white construction paper and draw a picture above

it that matches the sentence. The next day, the teacher puts their papers up on the board and the class evaluates each sentence using a checklist like:
Correct Spelling
Correct Capitalization
Correct Punctuation
7 Words or More
Interesting Vocabulary
We put a star on the paper for each item that is correct. The pairs put their names on the back of the paper so no one is embarrassed. Do this several times and then have students do it independently and exchange papers for evaluation.