top of page

PoPCast Ep 15 transcript: Inviting Students to Combine (pt. 2)

Writer's picture: Travis LeechTravis Leech

Travis: Welcome back to another episode of PoPCast! I am Travis. 

Whitney: and I'm Whitney. 

Travis: And this is part two of an episode discussing the invitation to combine sentences. So if you missed the first part of this episode, the last podcast, you should pop back in there, check it out. There you're going to learn a little bit more about the research base that led us to this idea of sentence combining, as well as some of the behind the scenes, what we do to get this party started. All right, Let's get into some work in the book. Highlight some lessons that could be helpful. 

Whitney: Okay, awesome. 

Travis: Let's talk our listeners through Our teaching process with a lesson. 

Whitney: All right! So the lesson that I'm actually going to be taking us through today is from the fifth grade book. It's less than 5. 17 and it uses a beautifully written fantasy book by Kelly Barnhill called the Ogress and the Orphans. And one thing that I really loved about, and I love this about Kelly Barnhill's writing in general, is just her description and her word choice and how she puts description together in a variety of ways in her sentences. I wanted to tap into that for fifth graders as they in fifth grade in their writing, when they are using description, they tend to use a lot, but it goes on and on, [00:02:00] or it's, and there's not really a variety of within the sentence where that description goes.

The sentence that I actually use that I deconstructed is, "In the cozy dimness of her crooked house, the ogress peered through her periscope." So you have a verb, you have an active verb there, a vivid verb is what we might say. You have adjectives there, you have prepositional phrases there, and the sentence begins with an opener.

So you have that prepositional phrase, that description with the adjective, followed by a comma, and then into the subject and verb of the sentence. So I just thought it was a beautifully written sophisticated sentence that uses a description that we could really think about, okay, what are the relationships that are happening within this sentence that were combined together.

To deconstruct that I broke it into four different sentences. So these are the four sentences I've broken into, and these are the four sentences that we would share with the students. We wouldn't share that beautifully written sentence yet because that's going to be what we share once we work on combining.

So the four sentences are, 

  1. The ogress peered through her periscope. 

  2. The ogress did this in the dimness of her house. 

  3. Her house was crooked. 

  4. The dimness was cozy. 


So you have those adjectives separated out into separate sentences, and the students then can decide, okay, what was cozy? What was dim? Where would those words fit when we're rearranging? Where would they fit within our sentence? And of course, then we would add punctuation and conjunctions as well. What about you, Travis? 

Travis: [00:04:00] I am going to highlight for us today Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. This is a story about Ernest Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica on the Endurance and everything that this ship and its crew endure as they are in Antarctica. What I really appreciated about this text or the story was it gave some great descriptions to really ground you in a space and help you really understand the nature of that extreme weather that's happening in Antarctica.

So the sentence that or the chunk of text that students are going to be working with as we start this off and we do some modeling is “The ice never melts; It clings to the bottom of the world, spawning winds, storms and weather that affects the whole planet.” 

So you've got some sophisticated stuff happening here. We have a connection. We have sentences connected with a semicolon. We have a series of ideas or actions happening. So we have some things going on and we have this deconstructed into six separate sentences. So you could already see some complexity that we move into as this is one of the first lessons in the combining space. So we deconstructed this into 

  1. The ice never melts.

  2. The ice clings to the bottom of the world. 

  3. The ice spawns winds. The ice spawns storms. 

  4. The ice spawns weather. 

  5. The weather affects the whole planet.

These ideas, I think there's going to be some [00:06:00] easy entry points for students already to be thinking about. How might we add to the complexity of these ideas by combining them together? Where are some easy starting points for that to happen? 

Whitney: And I just think as you were reading that sentence to me, I just thought of the students who write and run on sentences. These combining lessons help those students so much because they do have multiple ideas in one sentence. And so then we can start to discover, okay, what are the relationships between these ideas? Can they go together in a sentence or do they need to be separated? With this work, we can really tackle the conundrum of run-on sentences that we see often as well. And the more work they do with combining, the more they see those relationships in their own writing among their multiple sentences that they have possibly in one. 

Travis: Yeah, I love that. And as we're tackling just simple ideas to simple ideas, how we connect those, that's a great way for students to be able to visualize what needs to happen here.

We need to connect it in some way. So what is that punctuation that does that? Is that punctuation and a word? Are those certain words? So I think giving kids the tools to think through as they're gonna put all this content down on paper, that's how we make that work together so that we minimize the amount of run on sentences or fragments that aren't purposeful or whatever the issues that we get into with our students.

Whitney: Yes. Excellent. Because I was just originally just thinking of short sentences, right? Like short choppy sentences that students write in, but then they also write in the long run on sentences. And so it really taps into all of the things that are happening in their writing and how we can make those more sophisticated.

Travis: What does modeling look like for you with this lesson? 

Whitney: Yeah. So I would share those chopped up [00:08:00] sentences, right? The shorter sentences, the four sentences. And I would have the draft. We actually have a nice little visual. That's that cell phone visual that shows the D-R-A-F-T, and we can use that.

We have that side by side next to our sentences, and we say, okay, first we delete. We look for words that are repetitive or unnecessary that we can delete. What do you see here that is repetitive? And so right away, we have 

the ogress peered through her periscope. 

The ogress did this in the dimness of her house.

We see the ogres twice so we can cross out. We only need one of those, right? So the ogress is something that we could cross out. Then we see dimness again later down in another sentence. So we know there's some kind of connection there. So we can cross off one of those dimness, right? And then look, same with cozy, same with crooked on.

And so we see some things that are deleted or that could be deleted. Okay. And we just simply cross them off. We have a nice display page here. If you have a document camera, or if you have a board that you can scan this and put it up, you can just simply cross through those words to delete them to show we don't need those words.

Now, what do we have left over? Let's take a look at the words we have left over. Let's rearrange them into a way that can make sense by putting them all together in one sentence. And often we'll talk about the ideas that are in that sentence. If there's multiple actions or if there's multiple subjects, we could turn and talk about, okay let's combine this part first and then we can combine this other part and really start to put this puzzle together. That's what I feel like it's doing is really putting a puzzle together of words. 

And what happens is during that same time. It's simultaneous. Students are coming up with words to add to the sentence to help make it make sense, especially conjunctions. And sometimes commas come up right [00:10:00] away. Travis with yours, with the semicolon, they may or may not know to bring in a semicolon. 

Travis: Yes. And that's I've, 100 percent of the time that I've done this, done these lessons in the classroom, I've been surprised by how students combine these ideas and the thinking that goes into it. I have maybe a, in my mind, like this, reasonable-sized list of ways that we might play with this just from experiencing it and thinking through it as a learner myself. But students always are like, "Oh, what if we did this? What if we did this? What if we?" Oh, that actually, that sounds good. Or that makes sense.

Or we, if students are trying and it isn't making sense, we can talk through that. That's part of the conversation that happens in modeling as justification of why. We're not just throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. It's okay, you did that. Why do you think that might, may or may not make sense here?

Let's talk a little bit more. And in that justification, I think sometimes students realize maybe that's not the most effective choice. Or they can say, "I think this makes sense here because..." They have various reasons that are usually very sound. That makes sense. 

Whitney: And I usually write down their thoughts, right? So we're writing down these different sentence combinations that they're coming up with to show. There are multiple ways to combine, and then we can decide after we have a few written down which ones do we think are most effective and why. And for this, for me, because the author begins with that prepositional phrase, most of the time when I have done this with students, they do not come up with that at the beginning.

They come up with The ogress peered through her periscope in the dimness of her eyes. dimness of her crooked house. And then they say and sometimes, they'll say, that was [00:12:00] cozy, right? So they'll still think about, oh yeah, we need to add that adjective. I'm just going to put it on the end.

So we write that down and we say, okay, now let's think about cozy. Where else could it go? And continue to rearrange within our new sentence, what we have so we can say, Oh what about in the dimness of her cozy house? Or her crooked house, right? Where could we put that at the end? Where else might we put it and have these rearranging conversations with the sentence once we've done some of that combining.

Travis: Yeah, I love that idea of all the possibilities then living on the whiteboard or on your piece of paper under the document cam so that students can see possibilities that exist. I also want to affirm if you are have tried this or if you're about to get into combining lessons that it's okay if students aren't quite sure if there's like this chunk here doesn't make sense anywhere so we're going to stick it at the beginning stick it at the end what really enhances the learning is after when we compare our work or our thinking to the author's original, that comparative analysis, there's some really deep learning that takes place of the, oh, that's what this author did.

Interesting. That's a choice that this author made that is highly effective and I can see now where it makes sense and fits. There's some great learning that takes place there. When students can see that that example connected the work that they've done and the thinking they've done connected across compared and contrasted against the author's original. 

Whitney: Yeah. Those discoveries are some of my favorite times in the lesson when they think they have exactly what the author says. And then I put it up there and they're like, Oh, wait a minute. You can do that. Like a lot. Sometimes they're like, I didn't know you could do that. So they discover some craft moves that they didn't even know were possible when they turn around and [00:14:00] look at what the author did too.

Travis: That's really the process that we follow in modeling. We put the DRAFTBoard up, or we have the letters in DRAFT available. We talk students through each of them. It could be in order. Sometimes I've also found that students will be really excited to want to rearrange first. "Oh, I see this. I want to look, can we put this here?" 

But if students aren't very confident or sure in taking the reins up front. That's an easy process to go through or protocol to go through as the teacher to facilitate. What do we see that's repetitive? Let's delete. How now might we rearrange what's left? How do we add connector words or punctuation to connect these ideas?

In all the lessons too, we do give suggestions of from this many sentences, how many do we want to combine it down to. So that could be another goal that you set for students. Within these six sentences, can we combine them down to two or one or three, whatever the case may be. We're going to give you that goal idea based on the author's original, but I don't know if that's a necessity for you to, if that's going to create more of a struggle than a joyful experience for students to have to navigate that combining down to a certain number. Just know that we have that there as a suggested connection point as we go to the author's original. 

Whitney: And as we're going through that acronym, delete, rearrange, add, when you get to forming new verbs, you may not form a new verb for this combination. Sometimes there is that option. The option's always there. Sometimes when you form a new verb, it makes sense. Other times it doesn't. And I believe we're going to be doing another episode specifically on forming new verbs where we'll get more into that. But when we form new verbs, we really think about like participles. 

Adding an -ING to the verb, to one of the verbs [00:16:00] and setting that off with the comma as like a closer or an infinitive verb, changing the verbs to infinitives. Putting the word in front of the verb. I'm thinking about active versus passive voice. Those are ways that we can change the verb.

If we need to reform a new verb. Sometimes some students that I've worked with will also think about a different verb to use in place that would make more sense. Like sometimes the verbs the author uses are just boring verbs, like the word said, for instance, or something like that. And so the students want to use it like a more vivid verb. And so I let them play with that. I'm like, yeah, that's also revision: replacing words that are there. That's revision! Let's go ahead and try that out. I will say it's probably not what the author is going to do because these sentences were taken from exactly what the author said, but it's still an option.

And so we can compare and contrast our new choice of verbs with that the author used. So always have that option for the students, but just know that it's not always going to come into play with our combinations. 

Travis: Very important point there. So as we move along in this lesson flow, we move from modeling to collaborating through conversation. This is a similar structure as modeling, where we're going to put another deconstructed group of sentences in front of students, and we are now going to hand the reins over to them to work together in partners or small groups to talk through that same process. How might we go through the draft process to combine these ideas to a smaller, more complex, sophisticated sentence or group of sentences?

Whitney: And with that, the combination they come up with is going to have a similar [00:18:00] focus that the combination in the modeling came up with, right? We're not necessarily going to have them form a complex sentence when our model is a compound sentence. So that's just something to keep in mind too. So they do have some things specific that they are thinking about.

So in this case in They're really thinking about adjectives and prepositional phrases and how those could come together and maybe beginning with a prepositional phrase rather than putting it at the end. That's something just to keep in mind too, that collaborating through conversation is a chance for them to practice together the same type of work that we did in the modeling.

Travis: Yeah. And also just to really. Connect back to a conversation that we had earlier in this episode, the idea of the Patterns of Power connection to a lesson in Patterns of Revision. In the, specifically in the combining section, we tried to elevate Patterns of Power lessons that are going to highlight a grammatical pattern or a convention that is going to be complementary to what the author has crafted in their original.

So that In the example that I just gave, Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World, in that author's original, there is a semicolon connecting two ideas together to form it into one sentence. If students don't necessarily have comfort in that background knowledge of a semicolon and its use, if we have front loaded with the Patterns of Power lesson set around semicolons and their purpose, students are going to have that content really fresh at the top of their mind as they move into this work. 

So if you really want to set students up for success, looking at the front of the book at the Patterns of Power connections to a specific lesson that you might be doing in the combining space, that's going to be a great setup so that students who not only students who might struggle with this, but students who are [00:20:00] also going to be very successful, that just gives them an extra tool to be thinking about as they're thinking about combining these ideas. 

Whitney: Absolutely. And we get pretty specific within the lesson of that connection. We really lay out that connection for you specifically in the lesson. So this lesson in fifth grade is tied to the prepositional phrases lessons in Patterns of Power.

So really thinking about, okay, here we learn in Patterns of Power, how to use prepositional phrases. And now we can come over to Patterns of Revision and think about different ways within a sentence to use those prepositional phrases. 

Travis: From here, we move into application. So after students have done that collaborating through conversation, after they've seen the author's original, after we've had that conversation around comparatively analyzing their work versus the author's, we want to get students into their own writing to do some of this sentence combining work or play, depending on how you look at it.

So things to think about in this space, we can go back to a processed writing piece that we've a multi draft writing piece that we've been working on. We can also create a just-in-time low-stakes writing opportunity that we can go back into. There are various modes of writing that we can revisit, so I don't want you to think that there's only one way.

If I'm not, if we're not drafting a multi paragraph essay right now, it doesn't make sense for us to go back in for revision. Any piece of writing that you're doing has potential to be able to play in this way to go back and do some combining. So just think about that. I don't know, Whitney, if you want to add to that at all.

Whitney: Absolutely. I have some classrooms I'm going into in a few weeks to where we're going to do some revision lessons and they will just be coming back from a break. So they will not have a current piece of writing that they are working on as they're just getting [00:22:00] started coming back into it. They're going to be writing some opinion pieces.

And so one of the things that I'm going to have them do during the application part of this is that we're going to put up some statements that they can have an opinion on. And I'm going to ask them to combine some of their ideas about that opinion that they have to really start to think about, okay, I have this idea. I have this idea that supports my opinion. I have this idea that supports my opinion. And all of these just ideas, right? And how can we combine some of those ideas that they have? They're going to list some ideas and then work to write some combination sentences of those ideas. So even some pre-writing, of really thinking about how they might combine during pre-writing. 

Travis: Love that. You can think about what type of writing is coming up or what's going to be something important for students and that could be something that you get students in the habit of generating that type of content or writing in that mode.

We can also connect it back to the content of the text that we're interacting with for this lesson. So if you think about character and there's the situation they're in. If you think about the brief read aloud and maybe some topics or themes that are bubbling up from that read aloud, you can use that as an entry point into writing.

 A suggested quick write opportunity from this middle school lesson would be describing critical items you would take with you if you were going on an expedition, thinking about a specific location that you might be traveling to. From that, students are going to generate some low-stakes just-in-time writing.

And we can go back in and play with how we might combine two ideas, two of the things together. There, there's a whole host of options and opportunities for you to get students into writing that does not have to be painful for them or for you and can yield some great opportunities. To get in and revise, just play with revision.

Whitney: And another thing with combining that [00:24:00] has worked really well in some classrooms I've gone into is this idea of what I call a tip box or not a tip box, sorry, a practice box. Okay. So This was, I'm giving you a tip. So the tip was in my mind, but this is a practice box. The students can draw a box, right? They can draw a box in their notebook. They can just have a sticky note as their box. But what they do is they think about ideas within their writing that they want the reader to know. So they just write down some ideas on the sticky note, and then they work to combine some of those ideas. And sometimes what I found when we were testing these out is when it came to application, students looked at their own writing and had no clue how to combine what was there.

And so we moved into this practice box idea of, okay, pull some ideas from your writing that you really want the reader to know. Let's go ahead and put those ideas down in the practice box, and then think about how you might combine those. And then from those combinations, are there any of these combinations that you can add to your writing?

And so often they found a sentence, they rewrote or combined something and they put it back into their writing. I know there was one student that I was working with and they were writing a narrative. On their sticky note, they did a description of the character that wasn't in their writing, but they wrote about the character in the practice box, and they ended up coming up with a really beautifully written combination, I think, that ends up being compound sentences is what we're working on. And that student turned around and put that compound sentence in their writing to give the reader a little bit more about the character as a description.

The practice box is that low stakes piece, right? Oh this is something you can do. And then as a writer, you can choose, is this a sentence that would work into your writing? And if so where could that go? But that practice box, knowing [00:26:00] it's a practice box, the students then felt oh, okay, I'm just practicing here. This isn't for a grade. It's not something that's going to be tested for me. I just get to practice and play around. 

Travis: Love that. That's a great tip. Great tip for a practice box. 

Whitney: There you go. Not a tip box, a practice box. 

Travis: Okay. The last piece in a lesson in a combined lesson, just like the other lessons within the other chapters in the patterns of revision is sharing results.

You really want to. elevate student writing and celebrate them and the work that they are doing. So sharing results, whatever the case may be in each lesson, we offer a suggested protocol for sharing. Sometimes that also involves some reflective questioning, or maybe it involves student movement, getting them up and moving them in certain ways. Maybe it involves connecting into a digital space to be able to. Post their writing and share it, but in any case. The positive benefits of sharing our writing with each other. We get another example of how a student has worked through the content that we've been experiencing and how they've made those ideas more complex and sophisticated.

So great. Also, an opportunity for students to amp each other up to build confidence, to give some positive feedback. Hey, I love what you did there. If I hear that from a classmate, from a colleague, that amps me up and makes me feel more confident. So I can continue to do this Oh, this does make sense. And I'm good at this. Okay. Here we go. 

Whitney: And sometimes I'll say, Oh you're like Kelly because right. Kelly Barnhill is our mentor author. So look, you're just like Kelly. Look what you did. Look what Kelly did. I'm just making them see they're just like a published author. It just adds to their identity as writers. I feel like combining is probably my favorite of all of them because they are so creative. This is their chance to be creative writers. And they really do. They get creative and really take the risks of trying things out. And sometimes their tries are not good. So they, but that's that learning that's that, Oh, that I tried that, but that didn't really work. Let me try something different. 

I just really enjoy what they come up with in their combinations. As we, we try out different things and then just their reactions when they compare theirs to that of the author. Those are fun too. 

Travis: You just brought a great. Thought to my mind from so this is part of the book that I'd love to read as maybe a closer talking about that. We're taking a look. We're thinking about combining in this way of combination and revision as play. So 

“Through this play, this trial and error comes effectiveness and in the same way our writers will find effect through the play they do with revision. Okay. Remember, writing is a process. Revision is part of that process. The most important thing we can do when teaching students to combine sentences is to resist the urge to fix and instead embrace the play involved in revising, helping students see the choices they have as writers. We celebrate the experimentation, the discovery, and the approximations that may or may not also come with errors. As we say. Mistakes are a sign of growth.” 

Whitney: Love it. That is a beautiful way to end that. 

Travis: Yes. 

Whitney: Mistakes are a sign of growth. 

Travis: I know, we are so excited for you to try this out in your classroom and we hope that this episode helped give you some tools, ideas, things to think about to support your work as you get into that messiness and play of revision with your students.

Whitney: Love it. 

Travis: All right. Peace out. 

Whitney: All right. See ya. 


0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

PoPCast Episode 13 transcript

Travis:  Hello! So good to have you with us again for another installment of Popcast Reboot. It's Travis and Whitney; we're back again....

PoPCast Episode 12 transcript

Travis:  Welcome listeners to another episode of PoPCast Reboot. I'm Travis.  Whitney:  And I'm Whitney.  Travis:  The most dynamic duo...

Comments


©2022 by Learning Leech Literacy.

bottom of page