Teacher Support During Independent Writing

Heather Adams: I'm going to come right back to talk with you guys.

Narrator: As she moves around the room, Ms. Adams weaves reminders about sentence combining strategies into her feedback to help them stick.

Heather Adams: How are you guys doing over here? Did you figure out any conjunction spots yet? "They have short tail and short legs." Maybe those would be related ideas that you could combine, you know? How's it going? Were you able yet to use any of our sentence combining strategies? Anybody want to share one? Beckett, you want to share one?

Beckett: "They also have fins so they can swim fast away from creatures that want to eat them."

Heather Adams: Ooh, I heard that so conjunction, right? And that so conjunction means that there's a cause and effect. So because they have fins, they can swim so fast away from predators. I love that. It sounds so much better than if Beckett had written like, "They have fins. Pupperfish have fins." Period. So much more interesting. Anybody else have one?

Student: "A giant squid has big eyes and sucker rings so they can catch and see prey really easy."

Heather Adams: Oh, I think I heard like three conjunctions in that sentence. So I love how you kind of combined some of the body parts, but not in a listy way. It sounded like it had a purpose sharing these. They have this and this so they can do this and this. Guys, great job. Keep on drafting and think about all those sentence combining strategies. You can add, you can take out words, move them around. That's the fun part of kind of being a writer and being an artist in this way. Nice job.