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All About Teaching Reading & Writing
  • Sentence Combining Skill Explainer

Quick Look: Introducing And, But, Or, and So

Video thumbnail for Quick Look: Introducing "And," "But," "Or," and "So"
Produced by Reading Universe, a partnership of WETA, Barksdale Reading Institute, and First Book
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Heather Adams: Are you ready? All right, we're going to start by just going over these four important words. Let's read them out loud together. What's our first conjunction?

Together: And.

Heather Adams: We put related ideas together. What's our second conjunction?

Students: But.

Heather Adams: But. This is when we have two contrasting ideas, things that are different than each other. What about this third one?

Students: Or.

Heather Adams: Or. I remember last time Molly said, "chicken patty or salad." We use this for choices or options. And then finally, what's this last one?

Students: So.

Heather Adams: So. I think so might be my favorite because so shows cause and ...

Together: effect.

Heather Adams: This happens, so this happens. Exactly.

What did you notice?

Support Materials

Sentence Expansion Blank Worksheet

Use this graphic organizer when teaching Sentence Expansion. Write a simple sentence at the top, such as The dog barks. Then choose questions ("When?", "Where?", "Why?", or "How?") to answer to make the sentence longer and more detailed. Finally, students can write the expanded sentence at the bottom of the page.

Download Worksheet

Lesson Plan for Sentence Expansion

In this writing lesson, students learn how to expand a simple sentence, or kernel sentence, by answering when, where, why, and how.

Download Lesson Plan

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