Once student have basic sentences down, sometimes it can be hard to encourage them to create more interesting, complex sentences. We want our students to expand their sentences, but how can we help them understand how to do it? The most simple solution is to teach our students to expand sentences using their senses. This simple strategy is an effective way to help them with this complex skill. Let’s dive right in.
Using the 5 Senses to Expand Sentences
I’ve shared before how to help our students show rather than tell in their writing, but today’s strategy is a step before that. If you have students who are constantly writing short, simple sentences like “I see a ball.” and “She has a hat.” this strategy is exactly what you need.
Using the 5 senses to teach expanding sentences works well for three reasons.
- Students most likely know about the five senses
- Students use their senses every day
- It’s a very concrete which makes it easy to understand
Color Coded Senses
Learn Together
First, start by reviewing the 5 senses. Then, I recommend color coding each sense. You can use whatever colors you like, but for my examples, I’ve used orange for sight, yellow for touch, green for smell, blue for hearing, and pink for taste. Using colors for each sense to encourage students to really think about their word choice.
Start with a very simple sentence like “I eat a lollipop.” Tell students that you’re going to work together to expand the sentence. Using colored strips of paper, or different colored markers on the white board, have students help you come up with a describing word for lollipop (or whatever noun you’re focusing on). If you’re working with the sentence on paper, cut the sentence in half. Then, take turns adding the describing words into the sentence. You can add 1,2,3, or even all 5.
You can repeat this activity as many times as you need to. If you want to make it even more engaging and effective, write sentences about things in your room, and allow students to touch, smell, look, and listen to them. “Mrs. Moore has a flower.” “I see a toy snake.” If you can give students food, you can even allow them to taste an apple or a cracker and write a sentence about it together using this method.
Student Practice
From there, you can give your students simple sentences and encourage them to add an adjective or two using their senses. Have them write their word choices based on the color coded system, and then they can see how often they focus on sight, taste, smell, and so on. Encourage them to use different sentences for each sentence.
Also, be sure to talk about using senses that make sense. For example, you probably don’t want to describe how your hamster tastes or it probably makes more sense to focus on how a guitar sounds than what it tastes like. As your students practice, they’re learning how to easily expand their sentences. Next time they’re stuck, you can simply remind them to focus on their senses to describe something!
Don’t forget to grab your free, Expand Your Sentences Poster and student practice pages. Click the picture below to go to the free resource library.
Related posts you’ll love:
- How to Teach Basic Sentence Writing Effectively
- Using Subject and Predicate to Improve Student Writing
- Teaching Students to Show, Not Tell in Their Writing
