Let's Build Sentences 4
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Overview
Using this Resource
Connecting to the Curriculum
Marking Student Responses
Working with Students
Further Resources
This task is about building sentences.
The following sentences are all about Billy.
Choose which word to use to join the ideas in the sentences together.
Choose which word to use to join the ideas in the sentences together.
Task administration:
This resource is based on a riddle. The sentence construction could first be explored through oral language and playing the word game. For information about this riddle, see https://blog.firstbook.org/2009/02/17/building-literacy-skills-with-word-games/.
This resource is completed online and does NOT have auto marking displayed to students. It is one of four resources with a similar format:
These resources provide information on students’ ability to combine sentences with appropriate conjunctions. All four resources have a shared task at the end, where students comment on their partner’s work.
It is suggested that teachers work through Let's Build Sentences 1 with the class or a group of children, before students move on to complete the other resources individually or in pairs.
Copyright:
Images purchased from Dreamstime.
Level:
2
Curriculum info:
Key Competencies:
Keywords:
Description of task:
The focus of this resource is the use of simple conjunctions. Students decide which conjunction to use to combine two ideas to make one sentence.
Curriculum Links:
Links to the Literacy Learning Progressions for Writing
This resource helps to identify students’ ability to:
- generate content that is relevant to the task
- demonstrate knowledge of how language works
as described in the Literacy Learning Progressions for Writing at: http://www.literacyprogressions.tki.org.nz/The-Structure-of-the-Progressions.
Learning Progression Frameworks
This resource can provide evidence of learning associated with within the Writing Learning Progressions Frameworks.
Read more about the Learning Progressions Frameworks.Answers/responses:
| Ability to join two simple ideas together with an appropriate conjunction. | easy |
| Ability to bring more than two ideas together, and use conjunctions appropriately to create compound and complex sentences (required of Let’s Build Sentences 1, 2, and 3 only). | difficult |
| Ability to bring more than two ideas together, use conjunctions appropriately, and order and add details to the ideas to capture time changes between them (required of Let’s Build Sentences 3 only). | very difficult |
| Ability to use punctuation correctly. | very difficult |
Results based on an online sample of 47 Year 3 and 4 students.
Teaching and learning:
This resource is one of four similar resources that were trialled with 47 Year 3 and 4 students. The following is a summary of patterns we noticed across these resources with examples of student responses from the trial. Please note that student responses have not been corrected.
Most students were able to join two simple ideas together with an appropriate conjunction.
From Let’s Build Sentences 1: the waves at the beach are wild and deafening From Let’s Build Sentences 2: as we splashed through the water we got soaked. From Let’s Build Sentences 3: The sandcastle is being swept away, because the tide is swallowing it upFrom Let’s Build Sentences 4: Billy likes wearing slippers but he does not like wearing shoes.
A small number of students were able to bring more than two ideas together, and use conjunctions appropriately to create compound and complex sentences. Note that this was required of Let’s Build Sentences 1, 2, and 3 only.
From Let’s Build Sentences 1: The children are at the beach looking for crabs but is difficult to grab them because there scuttling away.
From Let’s Build Sentences 2: When I was little my aunts took me to the beach. We marched through the water and, when we got the giggles it was so much fun.
From Let’s Build Sentences 3: The girl is building a sandcastle and the sea is booming in the distanceThe sandcastle is being swept away as the tide is swirling around it.
A very small number of students were able to bring more than two ideas together, use conjunctions appropriately, and order and add details to the ideas to capture time changes between them.
Note that this was required of Let’s Build Sentences 3 only.
As the girl builds her sandcastle she can here the sea booming in the distance. When she leaves sandcastle is covered up by the incoming tide.The girl was building a sandcastle and the sea is just lapping the shore. Now the tide has come in and the sandcastle is being washed away by the waves that are gently swallowing it up. As can be seen from the above student examples, most students did not use punctuation correctly.
This may indicate that students need to be specifically taught how to access punctuation on the keyboard, e.g., using two keys at once to get a capital letter – the shift key and the letter itself. It may also indicate that students need to better proofread the work they do on devices and/or have their attention drawn to the rules for punctuation within their reading and writing programmes. Each of the four resources ends with students sharing their work with a partner.
Partners were asked to comment on the work done, to discuss other possible ways of joining sentences together, and to contribute their ideas to the tasks. Many partners experimented with using different conjunctions, vocabulary, and ordering phrases. For example, from Let’s Build Sentences 3: The sandcastle is beginning to get destroyed as the tide comes closer and closer.