Teaching Advanced Compound Sentences in Middle School: A Planning Session (Part 1)
- Travis Leech
- May 15
- 36 min read
Welcome to the first part of our two-part series on planning a Patterns of Power lesson for grades 6-8. In this post, I'll walk you through how Whitney and I approach planning a lesson focused on advanced compound sentences for middle school students. Stay tuned for part two, where we'll dive into the invitations to Notice, Share & Celebrate, Apply, and Edit for this same lesson.
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Travis: You feel ready to get this party rolling?
Whitney: Oh, let's go.
Travis: Okay.
So we are back for another episode of PoPCast, and today we are looking at middle school, sixth through eighth grade planning for a pop lesson that continues this idea of connecting ideas together. So we're looking today at advanced compound sentences.
If you have not yet looked at the last episode, the elementary session for planning that we did, you might want to check that out. That's gonna give you some foundational understanding of where we might be in the elementary classroom when we are looking at this specific pattern of connecting sentences together via a compound sentence.
Whitney, I think I'm gonna run the show today. I'll be the lead in our PLC group, and I am going to just ask for your brilliance whenever you would like to add it to the conversation, so that we can just build the best possible lesson in an efficient amount of time for a middle school classroom.
How does that sound?
Whitney: I think it sounds great. I just love this idea because as a teacher, if I was listening to this. I may have a team that I work really well with, and we can have PLC conversations like this, but at the same time, I may not, I may be on my own and I can still walk away with a plan from these episodes and something that I can feel more confident in doing on my own.
So I think it's great.
Travis: [00:02:00] Yeah. Love that. Great point. I remember at the start of my career spending a few school years as the lone person on my team in my specific grade level, my specific prep. So this another, if you feel like you are out there on an island sometimes with planning, feel free to dive in with us. Mm-hmm. And we're gonna have resources connected in the episode notes as well as give you some shout outs to some connections that we're making in the episode. So. Great. Without further ado,
Whitney: let's do it.
Travis: Let's do it.
We are going to take a look at for planning purposes we're taking, so this slideshow, when you access it in the show notes, will probably be reorganized in the classroom facing view, but we flipped it thinking about as we're planning, we want to start with that standard and start with a language that we want to focus on for that standard. So in this case, we are taking a look at two possibilities for focus phrases.
One is based on our dip into the middle school Patterns of Power book. We're looking at more advanced compound sentences. Where I would look for this specific lesson as a comparative view in the book is lesson 5.3. If you have the green book in your possession, it's gonna start on page 140, and what I want to do as a planning hack and efficiency hack is take a look at the focus phrase and think about is this one that I can just take and use right away, steal it, put it into my lesson.
So this is our first option: "I use compound sentences to join ideas."
Whitney: And Travis, you also here, like if I, if I'm a seventh grade teacher, for instance, hopefully my students know about compound sentences and if they've had parents [00:04:00] power in previous years, they should know by the time they come to me.
So this one could just be kind of a review for the focus phrase yet, I know in the lesson we'll go a little bit deeper with it. But if I feel my students are newer to this idea of compound sentences, I think that's where we can go with your next one.
Travis: Absolutely. Yeah. This is if we want to scaffold some understanding, bringing students back to the kind of nuts and bolts of the compound sentence that we have, that comma and a conjunction. So we'll have one of the FANBOYS. If I'm gonna use fan boys as a term in my classroom, I'm gonna have some sort of visual anchor for what does FANBOYS stand for. So we will, we'll highlight that in just a moment. This idea of the language this compound sentences, if that's already foundational, that all my students or all our students in our class understand it now we look at purpose: what is the purpose of a compound sentence? We want to use it. To join ideas and we're gonna explore that as we take a look at some sentences.
So with that, we'll have one of these. This is one of the two. So I might use this. I use a common one of the fan boys to join two sentences. We are gonna also include a visual for what that means: the FANBOYS right there. This also would make sense if I am suggesting the other focus phrase. I use compound sentences to join ideas because this just shows a very clear structure of that pattern, how we set it up.
Whitney: Mm-hmm.
Travis: And if you have checked out the last episode, the episode four elementary planning, you're gonna notice the, visual here looks just the same.
We wanted to share that. Our complexity, our building of complexity is gonna be in the text that we use, the conversations that we have, and sometimes [00:06:00] how we apply this so we can have the same visual in fourth grade as we can in seventh grade. Students can still get the just right amount of challenge out of this.
Whitney: Absolutely. The craft is going, you know, the, the vocabulary and just the way authors craft their sentence. They're still crafting it within the structure, but the language they use is going to be more complex. So having an understanding of structure, you can get into more complex language that way.
Travis: Let's take a look at the excerpt that we're going to use. In this case, we are taking a look at a chunk of text from a shorter text. So we're not gonna take a look at a novel as our starting point for this lesson. Instead, I'm going to be presupposing that I'm already using a text from in this case, this is found on Common Lit. This is an informational article about farms of the future.
So this "Farms of the Future" text. What we're gonna take a look at is a brief reading of this. How I might use this in the classroom: we may read this entire text as a first read. We may do some comprehension strategies with that first read and some other, maybe a response connection before we dip into highlighting and elevating one sentence or a small model.
But just to give you a little taste of what is going on with this text. We will have this linked for you. So you are welcome to pause this right now, read the text and then we can come back together. But I just want to zero in on a part of the [00:08:00] text that is in the middle. So this is in on page two of the text as you're taking a look at.
The "Farms of the Future", what this article highlights is this futuristic farming beyond what we know generally as a farming practice of planting things in the ground and, a traditional farming practice. This is moving into more advanced futuristic farming practices.
So one of these advanced futuristic farming practices is aquaponics, and I'm gonna read this briefly for us so that we can learn a little bit more about this farming practice of the future.
" Aquaculture is the raising of and harvesting of fish, shellfish, and other sea and freshwater life. Hydroponics is a way to grow plants without soil. Some people combine the two methods into aquaponics.
In aquaponics, fish give plants the nutrients they need to grow, and plants clean water for the fish. Fish pee and poop in the water where they live. That isn't a problem in an ocean or a lake, but water in a tank needs to be changed to stay fresh in aquaponics, the system sends dirty water from the fish tanks to containers of plants. As the water passes through the plant's roots, the roots remove the waste from the water and use it as fertilizer. The clean water is then sent back to the fish.
Fish such as tilapia can be raised this way year round, and plants such as tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, peppers, and celery can be grown in nutrient-rich water. Aquaponics is a way to raise fish and fruits and vegetables at the same time. But right now, aquaponic facilities cost a lot to set up and run. [00:10:00] So many people do not use them."
Whitney: Mm-hmm. That's so interesting.
Travis: Yeah. First thoughts, Whitney, what are you thinking?
Whitney: I just I'm just like visualizing, you know what that looks like, and I didn't even realize that this could be a thing. Yeah. I feel like I'm in like a dystopian novel right now or a movie. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Thinking of watching all of this happen, thinking this is something that could one day be a very popular, well- used practice.
Travis: Yeah. And if you are thinking about where this might fit, so a couple way reasons that I might use this text or that we might use this text in our classroom. One is it's an informational text, so this could be a great way to study elements of this genre or of this mode of writing. There's a great introductory setup, there are subtopics, topical headings where we focus on defining and explaining each of these different farming practices.
Whitney: You're probably gonna say this, but I feel like you could also even turn this into an argumentative writing piece. If we wanted to think about the writing side of this also it's an informational text to read, but then we could make it into an argumentative piece for writing. For what we write based on our, yeah.
Travis: If we give a, yeah. If we focus students on which of these farming practices do you think is the most sustainable or the most effective? Yeah. That could be a great way to spiral them into maybe some continued research. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because they do talk about the use of greenhouses. They talk about vertical farming, aquaponics, agricul, and smart farming. I know. So there's a lot going on in this.
Whitney: Oh, wow. I think another way that we could connect this into something that we're doing in the classroom would be through a novel study.
Travis: You talked about dystopian society. In middle [00:12:00] school, one of the novels that could be an anchor for learning is The Giver: a modern classic, dystopian novel. This could be a great way to connect.
Let's read about this and then let's connect to the this, into the community. Which of these practices might make the most sense in this community based on what we know about it so far? I think we could connect the two fairly reasonably through this process.
Whitney: What a great way to make this cross genre connections too. Love it.
Travis: Absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about the text that we are, or the model that we are going to dig into. And if you are already thinking advanced compound sentence work, you might have already, you might already be guessing where we're heading with this.
So the invitation to notice after having some context, at least the context of this subsection of the of the informational text that we are looking at "Farms of the Future," we're gonna dig into this sentence:
"Aquaponics is a way to raise fish and fruits and vegetables at the same time, but right now, aquaponic facilities cost a lot to set up and run, so many people do not use them."
Notice I spoke the commas aloud. In this instance, I wanted us to really notice that we have an advanced compound sentence on our hands here. So as we are taking a look at this, let's talk about some things that we might want to think about from the planning stage. If we want to focus kids on this compound sentence and the aspects of it and maybe why it's a little bit more advanced, what are some questions that we might ask or how might we focus kids in this way? What are some things that we need to know as teachers? I think that's also important to think about purpose and craft. WHY might we use this and HOW, [00:14:00] the structure of it. So what are some things that we might be thinking about in this case?
Whitney: I'm thinking like cause and effect. There's, different things I'm thinking here too. Especially the conjunctions. We're not just using AND, we're using BUT, we're using SO. When I ask students "What do you notice?" I'm hoping that they're going to notice the way the sentence is structured in meaning and how these ideas are connected. And maybe that's a question I ask. How are the ideas in the sentence connected?
Travis: "How are the ideas in the sentence connected?" I love that. Yes. I'm just writing that down. I think another thing that we want to highlight then is that BUT and the SO, so we could really highlight the purpose of these specific connector words.
Whitney: Mm-hmm.
Travis: I'm with you that I think AND is the most common entry point, but as we talk about what is. On both sides of that. But what is that setting up as far as a connection? How about the, and it's interesting. Yeah,
Whitney: because I'm just looking at it right now through the eyes of students and the word and is there several times.
Mm-hmm. So when we're talking, they're going to notice that and 'cause they're, noticing BUT and SO, and they know the FANBOYS for instance, then they're gonna say, oh, there's, AND too. We can still talk about the purpose of AND in the sentence. But it has, it's still connecting. It's just connecting in a different way. Then it is actual sentences.
Travis: Yeah. And what I love about this as a choice for a model for this advanced compound sentence work is, this is a great way to already clarify a misconception that students make.
Whitney: Yes.
Travis: I know you've experienced it. I've experienced it as well as we get into the compound sentence. We have our students key in on the coordinating conjunctions. And then there is that amount of time where suddenly every coordinating conjunction has a comma in front of [00:16:00] it. Right? Yeah.
Whitney: Yeah. The over approximation.
Travis: Yeah. Which I think is a common and necessary part of us growing and learning. But here we go as a way to really clarify, hey, why isn't there a comma after the ANDs? What is, what's the difference? So we're already doing some contrasting work here in thinking about the connections being made and the, purpose of that comma. So this is some, deep conversation that could be happening, right?
Whitney: Mm-hmm. For sure. I always think commas really are used to separate the ideas, right? They're, there for connection, but they're also there to separate. So that's definitely a conversation I would wanna have at. So what are the commas separating here? What is it that they're separating, making us pause before moving on when we read?
Travis: Yeah, I love that. So that is, I always suggest if I'm working with other teachers or as I'm planning that we think through what are some possible connection points that students might make, or what are some, things that students might connect to as they are noticing?
Also, thinking about what are some things that we might want to help clarify for students or as we might nudge them towards some follow ups if we get, nothing. It's happened before, right? Kids are like, it's a long sentence.
Whitney: It's a long sentence, right? Not something that I just keep looking at going, oh my goodness, that's such a long sentence.
And as a writer I ask, is it necessary? Do I need to have that long of a sentence? Or why did the writer choose to use such a long sentence? Do they always write with this long sentence, or was this purposefully put in there as a sentence variety option?
Travis: Yeah. So that is invitation to notice. We're going to key in on the purpose of the coordinating conjunctions. If students don't get [00:18:00] there, we want to maybe nudge them in that direction. So we might say, what do we notice about what's after the comma? What do we notice about the that word, but or that word. So what is it doing in this sentence? How does it help us as a reader? These are some follow-up questions that are going to be impactful to move students in this complex, more complex pattern toward a focus phrase and towards some understanding.
That is our invitation to notice. Let's move into compare and contrast. I wanna share, or we wanna share some options that we have for comparing and contrasting one of them. Whitney, I think, speaks very specifically to that thought of, whoa, this is a long sentence. What we could do, something we could do to contrast these ideas: how we might change these ideas. And this is something where we might just make the change here to show the power of the connectors and what they do in this compa, in this compare and contrast option. We have just changed the comma and the conjunction to a period. So we have separated these three standalone independent clauses or standalone sentences into their own space.
Whitney: Wow. And when I see that it's like, oh, that, when they're standing alone, it's so choppy. Mm-hmm. It just does not flow. Yeah.
So now I'm, liking the longer sentence better and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I need these ideas to come together with those conjunctions for me as a reader 'cause otherwise it's just very choppy.
Travis: Choppy. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. And I think it's something that. We might recognize in our students at certain times of the school year, even for some toward the end of the school year, we still have students who maybe have trouble intuitively or [00:20:00] naturally connecting their ideas together. They have the thoughts, but they come out in choppy chunks.
This is a great way of elevating what making different connections between these ideas could look like. I think if we wanted to contrast, this is a really impactful way to be able to contrast, to elevate that comma and that conjunction, how those could be powerful.
Whitney: Yeah, and it's interesting to take the compare contrast in this way rather than looking at a whole nother sentence. Mm-hmm. Just take really. Doing some deeper conversations into why we use those conjunctions. I love this idea.
Travis: Yeah. And then if we wanted to, because I. I don't think we could say this enough: there is a lot of opportunity for flexibility.
Whitney: Yes.
Travis: In each of these invitations for you as a teacher to meet your students' needs. If I think that I would rather elevate a structure that looks the same, maybe with some different wording, another thing that I could do is I could share another compound sentence that has that same structure of three independent ideas connected with two commas in conjunctions. Now, in this case, I chose something that I might use. This is another crossover and a hack into our classroom practice. I'm gonna be in my classroom doing First Chapter Friday reads every Friday. If not that Friday, I might cross it over into Thursday or Monday, depending on what we have going on in school.
But in this case, I found as I was previewing a First Chapter Friday, I found that Crystal Allen, the author between Two Brothers. This book right here that I've got, Ooh, there it is. Mm-hmm. In reverse, Between Two Brothers. She uses a few of these advanced compound sentences. So there are I think three that I found in [00:22:00] chapter one alone.
I thought that this was a great way to elevate either before or after this read aloud of the first chapter. Mm-hmm. Again, I want to use it to entice my students to choose some different independent reading options they might not necessarily gravitate toward without knowing about it, but here we go. Now we can insert just this little piece into our work with Patterns of Power.
Whitney: What I love about this one is again, just thinking through the student's eyes, is this sentence is the same structure, but it doesn't look as long. Yeah. It doesn't look as intimidating. I feel like when it comes to imitating, I could imitate this one. Whereas the Aquaponics one, I'm sure I could, but it's going to take me some time and it's going to it, For a lot of students it might be like can't do that. Whereas yeah, compare contrast gives them another option for that same that same structure, but maybe more reachable for some students.
Travis: And that's always something on our minds is how do we move toward imitation in a way that's gonna be sustainable, where students feel like it's just the right amount of challenge for them, but they still can find success
So this to me, this is in a piece of the, text where, the main character, Isaiah. It's his birthday in chapter one. He just got a new phone and he's taken a family picture. And so this is what happens in the family picture. Seth, his older brother, checking his phone, dad is making breakfast, so he is trying to steal a piece of bacon. Mom's stopping him from doing it right by grabbing his wrist.
So this to me is a, uh, feels like a sustainable move into imitation where we could connect to a picture, we could connect to something on their phone, a picture that [00:24:00] they've taken as a way to imitate this, this structure. Much more like
Whitney: visualizing a scene whether it's a scene, yeah. A movie or a scene from their own life, or a scene from a book they're reading, but just really doing some visualizing there and then turning around and writing a sentence about it.
Travis: Yes. So options. Let me just share two more. So, oh, okay. This. Yeah, this first one is if we wanted to cross over into a different genre, here's a little poetry love. If we wanted to get into some Robert Frost, " The Road Not Taken," ends with a great advanced compound sentence. There is one that might be interesting. I think it could also be a little bit more approachable for imitation. Alright, this next is another from Crystal Allen's between two brothers, this is where he is.
So the setting, they live on a farm and he's starting by feeding his, animals on the farm. So he's doing a little, some dance moves for his pigs as he is feeding them. Very cute. I love it. Such a fun story. Yes. And
Whitney: it's, that's more first person. So both of those are, which is interesting.
Travis: This would be a great way of this, second version of showing how we could move story along. Yes, we could use this advanced compound sentence structure to move our story along. Because that's really, this takes him from one place from one part of the farm to another because of the pigs not really being into his moves.
Whitney: Mm-hmm. And I like the Robert Frost one, 'cause it uses the conjunction AND. Still the advanced compound sentence, but now you're easing in twice. So that's a nice contrast too, like that.
Travis: Yeah. So if you are thinking like there has to be a certain [00:26:00] structure in the compare and contrast, just know that all these different options that we've highlighted for you, we want to move our students into understanding.
So this is, there are various ways that we could do that. We just have. Elevated a few different options for how we might do that.
Whitney: And really, you could even take two of these. You could take the one where it breaks the sentences apart and they see the choppiness of it, and then immediately you could go into one of these other options for them to look at. Now that they have a visual of why we use that structure, and then they can look at another one to help cement that structure with different contexts as they think about imitating.
Travis: That's really smart. Mm-hmm. That's great thinking. Love that.
Whitney: Because you could easily do that too. It doesn't have to be just one compare contrast. And it doesn't need to go overboard and you spending your whole period comparing and contrasting, but I think it's okay to break it down, take a look at it, and then share another example too.
Travis: Yeah. Remembering that around 10 minutes for each of these is really impactful. It keeps kids focused beyond 10 minutes. Oftentimes that devolves into not really productive conversation, at least in most of my experiences. So if we need to bring this across over two days, I think this is something important to think about. Mm-hmm. The options that you have. But yeah, that was really smart that you brought that up of.
Maybe a couple days of compare contrast. More than one.
All right, so we've covered a lot of ground today in our planning for this middle school Patterns of Power Lesson on advanced compound sentences. We've dug into our focus phrases, explored the informational text about aquaponics titled "Farms of the Future," which you can find in the show notes or through CommonLit.
And we've looked at different options for comparing and contrasting these sentence structures. Next time Whitney and I will get right into the invitations to imitate suggestions for [00:28:00] setting up novel ways to share and celebrate application, and the final editing conversations to wrap up the planning of this lesson set.
Looking forward to continuing to learn together. See you then.
Collaborating on Lesson Planning
One of the things I love about our PoPCast series is how it resembles a genuine PLC conversation. As Whitney pointed out during our discussion:
"I may have a team that I work really well with, and we can have PLC conversations like this, but at the same time, I may not, I may be on my own and I can still walk away with a plan from these episodes and something that I can feel more confident in doing on my own."
This resonates with my own experience. I spent the first few years of my career as the lone teacher for my specific grade level and prep. If you sometimes feel like you're planning in isolation, I hope this walkthrough helps you feel less alone.
Setting the Foundation: Standards and Focus Phrases
When planning a Patterns of Power lesson, I like to start with the standard and focus phrases we want to emphasize. For this advanced compound sentences lesson, we considered two possible focus phrases:
"I use compound sentences to join ideas."
"I use a comma and one of the FANBOYS to join two sentences."
The first option works well for students who already have foundational knowledge of compound sentences. The second option provides more scaffolding for students who might need a review of the structure.
We also discussed creating a visual that shows the FANBOYS (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So) to support student understanding of coordinating conjunctions.
Selecting an Engaging Text
For our mentor text, we selected an informational article titled "Farms of the Future" from CommonLit. The article explores futuristic farming practices, including aquaponics, which combines fish farming with plant cultivation without soil.
What makes this text valuable for classroom use:
It's an informational text that demonstrates genre conventions
It contains clear examples of advanced compound sentences
It can connect to other curriculum areas (science, dystopian literature)
It could be transformed into argumentative writing prompts
We discussed how this text could pair nicely with dystopian novels like The Giver, allowing students to consider which farming practices might work in that fictional community.
The Model Sentence: Invitation to Notice
For our focus sentence, we selected:
"Aquaponics is a way to raise fish and fruits and vegetables at the same time, but right now, aquaponic facilities cost a lot to set up and run, so many people do not use them."
This sentence provides an excellent example of an advanced compound sentence with multiple independent clauses connected by different coordinating conjunctions (but, so).
When planning the Invitation to Notice, we considered questions we might ask students:
How are the ideas in the sentence connected?
What's the purpose of each conjunction (BUT, SO)?
Why aren't there commas before all instances of AND?
Whitney suggested we focus on what the commas are separating:
"I always think commas really are used to separate the ideas, right? They're there for connection, but they're also there to separate."
This model sentence helps address a common misconception - students often place commas before every coordinating conjunction. This gives us an opportunity to clarify when commas are needed and when they're not.
Compare and Contrast Options
For the Compare and Contrast invitation, we explored several approaches:
Break the compound sentence into three separate sentences to show how choppy it becomes: "Aquaponics is a way to raise fish and fruits and vegetables at the same time. But right now, aquaponic facilities cost a lot to set up and run. So many people do not use them."
Show a similar structure from literature. I found examples in Crystal Allen's book Between Two Brothers: "Seth was checking his phone, Dad was trying to steal a piece of bacon, and Mom was grabbing his wrist."
Include examples from other genres like poetry (Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken")
Show another example from narrative writing that demonstrates how compound sentences can move a story forward
Whitney pointed out that we don't have to limit ourselves to just one compare/contrast example:
"It doesn't have to be just one compare contrast... I think it's okay to break it down, take a look at it, and then share another example too."
This flexibility lets us meet our students where they are and provide the right amount of challenge.
Read the Full Transcript
Click here to expand and read the full transcript
Travis: You feel ready to get this party rolling?
Whitney: Oh, let's go.
Travis: Okay.
So we are back for another episode of PoPCast, and today we are looking at middle school, sixth through eighth grade planning for a pop lesson that continues this idea of connecting ideas together. So we're looking today at advanced compound sentences.
If you have not yet looked at the last episode, the elementary session for planning that we did, you might want to check that out. That's gonna give you some foundational understanding of where we might be in the elementary classroom when we are looking at this specific pattern of connecting sentences together via a compound sentence.
Whitney, I think I'm gonna run the show today. I'll be the lead in our PLC group, and I am going to just ask for your brilliance whenever you would like to add it to the conversation, so that we can just build the best possible lesson in an efficient amount of time for a middle school classroom.
How does that sound?
Whitney: I think it sounds great. I just love this idea because as a teacher, if I was listening to this. I may have a team that I work really well with, and we can have PLC conversations like this, but at the same time, I may not, I may be on my own and I can still walk away with a plan from these episodes and something that I can feel more confident in doing on my own.
So I think it's great.
Travis: [00:02:00] Yeah. Love that. Great point. I remember at the start of my career spending a few school years as the lone person on my team in my specific grade level, my specific prep. So this another, if you feel like you are out there on an island sometimes with planning, feel free to dive in with us. Mm-hmm. And we're gonna have resources connected in the episode notes as well as give you some shout outs to some connections that we're making in the episode. So. Great. Without further ado,
Whitney: let's do it.
Travis: Let's do it.
We are going to take a look at for planning purposes we're taking, so this slideshow, when you access it in the show notes, will probably be reorganized in the classroom facing view, but we flipped it thinking about as we're planning, we want to start with that standard and start with a language that we want to focus on for that standard. So in this case, we are taking a look at two possibilities for focus phrases.
One is based on our dip into the middle school Patterns of Power book. We're looking at more advanced compound sentences. Where I would look for this specific lesson as a comparative view in the book is lesson 5.3. If you have the green book in your possession, it's gonna start on page 140, and what I want to do as a planning hack and efficiency hack is take a look at the focus phrase and think about is this one that I can just take and use right away, steal it, put it into my lesson.
So this is our first option: "I use compound sentences to join ideas."
Whitney: And Travis, you also here, like if I, if I'm a seventh grade teacher, for instance, hopefully my students know about compound sentences and if they've had parents [00:04:00] power in previous years, they should know by the time they come to me.
So this one could just be kind of a review for the focus phrase yet, I know in the lesson we'll go a little bit deeper with it. But if I feel my students are newer to this idea of compound sentences, I think that's where we can go with your next one.
Travis: Absolutely. Yeah. This is if we want to scaffold some understanding, bringing students back to the kind of nuts and bolts of the compound sentence that we have, that comma and a conjunction. So we'll have one of the FANBOYS. If I'm gonna use fan boys as a term in my classroom, I'm gonna have some sort of visual anchor for what does FANBOYS stand for. So we will, we'll highlight that in just a moment. This idea of the language this compound sentences, if that's already foundational, that all my students or all our students in our class understand it now we look at purpose: what is the purpose of a compound sentence? We want to use it. To join ideas and we're gonna explore that as we take a look at some sentences.
So with that, we'll have one of these. This is one of the two. So I might use this. I use a common one of the fan boys to join two sentences. We are gonna also include a visual for what that means: the FANBOYS right there. This also would make sense if I am suggesting the other focus phrase. I use compound sentences to join ideas because this just shows a very clear structure of that pattern, how we set it up.
Whitney: Mm-hmm.
Travis: And if you have checked out the last episode, the episode four elementary planning, you're gonna notice the, visual here looks just the same.
We wanted to share that. Our complexity, our building of complexity is gonna be in the text that we use, the conversations that we have, and sometimes [00:06:00] how we apply this so we can have the same visual in fourth grade as we can in seventh grade. Students can still get the just right amount of challenge out of this.
Whitney: Absolutely. The craft is going, you know, the, the vocabulary and just the way authors craft their sentence. They're still crafting it within the structure, but the language they use is going to be more complex. So having an understanding of structure, you can get into more complex language that way.
Travis: Let's take a look at the excerpt that we're going to use. In this case, we are taking a look at a chunk of text from a shorter text. So we're not gonna take a look at a novel as our starting point for this lesson. Instead, I'm going to be presupposing that I'm already using a text from in this case, this is found on Common Lit. This is an informational article about farms of the future.
So this "Farms of the Future" text. What we're gonna take a look at is a brief reading of this. How I might use this in the classroom: we may read this entire text as a first read. We may do some comprehension strategies with that first read and some other, maybe a response connection before we dip into highlighting and elevating one sentence or a small model.
But just to give you a little taste of what is going on with this text. We will have this linked for you. So you are welcome to pause this right now, read the text and then we can come back together. But I just want to zero in on a part of the [00:08:00] text that is in the middle. So this is in on page two of the text as you're taking a look at.
The "Farms of the Future", what this article highlights is this futuristic farming beyond what we know generally as a farming practice of planting things in the ground and, a traditional farming practice. This is moving into more advanced futuristic farming practices.
So one of these advanced futuristic farming practices is aquaponics, and I'm gonna read this briefly for us so that we can learn a little bit more about this farming practice of the future.
" Aquaculture is the raising of and harvesting of fish, shellfish, and other sea and freshwater life. Hydroponics is a way to grow plants without soil. Some people combine the two methods into aquaponics.
In aquaponics, fish give plants the nutrients they need to grow, and plants clean water for the fish. Fish pee and poop in the water where they live. That isn't a problem in an ocean or a lake, but water in a tank needs to be changed to stay fresh in aquaponics, the system sends dirty water from the fish tanks to containers of plants. As the water passes through the plant's roots, the roots remove the waste from the water and use it as fertilizer. The clean water is then sent back to the fish.
Fish such as tilapia can be raised this way year round, and plants such as tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, peppers, and celery can be grown in nutrient-rich water. Aquaponics is a way to raise fish and fruits and vegetables at the same time. But right now, aquaponic facilities cost a lot to set up and run. [00:10:00] So many people do not use them."
Whitney: Mm-hmm. That's so interesting.
Travis: Yeah. First thoughts, Whitney, what are you thinking?
Whitney: I just I'm just like visualizing, you know what that looks like, and I didn't even realize that this could be a thing. Yeah. I feel like I'm in like a dystopian novel right now or a movie. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Thinking of watching all of this happen, thinking this is something that could one day be a very popular, well- used practice.
Travis: Yeah. And if you are thinking about where this might fit, so a couple way reasons that I might use this text or that we might use this text in our classroom. One is it's an informational text, so this could be a great way to study elements of this genre or of this mode of writing. There's a great introductory setup, there are subtopics, topical headings where we focus on defining and explaining each of these different farming practices.
Whitney: You're probably gonna say this, but I feel like you could also even turn this into an argumentative writing piece. If we wanted to think about the writing side of this also it's an informational text to read, but then we could make it into an argumentative piece for writing. For what we write based on our, yeah.
Travis: If we give a, yeah. If we focus students on which of these farming practices do you think is the most sustainable or the most effective? Yeah. That could be a great way to spiral them into maybe some continued research. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because they do talk about the use of greenhouses. They talk about vertical farming, aquaponics, agricul, and smart farming. I know. So there's a lot going on in this.
Whitney: Oh, wow. I think another way that we could connect this into something that we're doing in the classroom would be through a novel study.
Travis: You talked about dystopian society. In middle [00:12:00] school, one of the novels that could be an anchor for learning is The Giver: a modern classic, dystopian novel. This could be a great way to connect.
Let's read about this and then let's connect to the this, into the community. Which of these practices might make the most sense in this community based on what we know about it so far? I think we could connect the two fairly reasonably through this process.
Whitney: What a great way to make this cross genre connections too. Love it.
Travis: Absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about the text that we are, or the model that we are going to dig into. And if you are already thinking advanced compound sentence work, you might have already, you might already be guessing where we're heading with this.
So the invitation to notice after having some context, at least the context of this subsection of the of the informational text that we are looking at "Farms of the Future," we're gonna dig into this sentence:
"Aquaponics is a way to raise fish and fruits and vegetables at the same time, but right now, aquaponic facilities cost a lot to set up and run, so many people do not use them."
Notice I spoke the commas aloud. In this instance, I wanted us to really notice that we have an advanced compound sentence on our hands here. So as we are taking a look at this, let's talk about some things that we might want to think about from the planning stage. If we want to focus kids on this compound sentence and the aspects of it and maybe why it's a little bit more advanced, what are some questions that we might ask or how might we focus kids in this way? What are some things that we need to know as teachers? I think that's also important to think about purpose and craft. WHY might we use this and HOW, [00:14:00] the structure of it. So what are some things that we might be thinking about in this case?
Whitney: I'm thinking like cause and effect. There's, different things I'm thinking here too. Especially the conjunctions. We're not just using AND, we're using BUT, we're using SO. When I ask students "What do you notice?" I'm hoping that they're going to notice the way the sentence is structured in meaning and how these ideas are connected. And maybe that's a question I ask. How are the ideas in the sentence connected?
Travis: "How are the ideas in the sentence connected?" I love that. Yes. I'm just writing that down. I think another thing that we want to highlight then is that BUT and the SO, so we could really highlight the purpose of these specific connector words.
Whitney: Mm-hmm.
Travis: I'm with you that I think AND is the most common entry point, but as we talk about what is. On both sides of that. But what is that setting up as far as a connection? How about the, and it's interesting. Yeah,
Whitney: because I'm just looking at it right now through the eyes of students and the word and is there several times.
Mm-hmm. So when we're talking, they're going to notice that and 'cause they're, noticing BUT and SO, and they know the FANBOYS for instance, then they're gonna say, oh, there's, AND too. We can still talk about the purpose of AND in the sentence. But it has, it's still connecting. It's just connecting in a different way. Then it is actual sentences.
Travis: Yeah. And what I love about this as a choice for a model for this advanced compound sentence work is, this is a great way to already clarify a misconception that students make.
Whitney: Yes.
Travis: I know you've experienced it. I've experienced it as well as we get into the compound sentence. We have our students key in on the coordinating conjunctions. And then there is that amount of time where suddenly every coordinating conjunction has a comma in front of [00:16:00] it. Right? Yeah.
Whitney: Yeah. The over approximation.
Travis: Yeah. Which I think is a common and necessary part of us growing and learning. But here we go as a way to really clarify, hey, why isn't there a comma after the ANDs? What is, what's the difference? So we're already doing some contrasting work here in thinking about the connections being made and the, purpose of that comma. So this is some, deep conversation that could be happening, right?
Whitney: Mm-hmm. For sure. I always think commas really are used to separate the ideas, right? They're, there for connection, but they're also there to separate. So that's definitely a conversation I would wanna have at. So what are the commas separating here? What is it that they're separating, making us pause before moving on when we read?
Travis: Yeah, I love that. So that is, I always suggest if I'm working with other teachers or as I'm planning that we think through what are some possible connection points that students might make, or what are some, things that students might connect to as they are noticing?
Also, thinking about what are some things that we might want to help clarify for students or as we might nudge them towards some follow ups if we get, nothing. It's happened before, right? Kids are like, it's a long sentence.
Whitney: It's a long sentence, right? Not something that I just keep looking at going, oh my goodness, that's such a long sentence.
And as a writer I ask, is it necessary? Do I need to have that long of a sentence? Or why did the writer choose to use such a long sentence? Do they always write with this long sentence, or was this purposefully put in there as a sentence variety option?
Travis: Yeah. So that is invitation to notice. We're going to key in on the purpose of the coordinating conjunctions. If students don't get [00:18:00] there, we want to maybe nudge them in that direction. So we might say, what do we notice about what's after the comma? What do we notice about the that word, but or that word. So what is it doing in this sentence? How does it help us as a reader? These are some follow-up questions that are going to be impactful to move students in this complex, more complex pattern toward a focus phrase and towards some understanding.
That is our invitation to notice. Let's move into compare and contrast. I wanna share, or we wanna share some options that we have for comparing and contrasting one of them. Whitney, I think, speaks very specifically to that thought of, whoa, this is a long sentence. What we could do, something we could do to contrast these ideas: how we might change these ideas. And this is something where we might just make the change here to show the power of the connectors and what they do in this compa, in this compare and contrast option. We have just changed the comma and the conjunction to a period. So we have separated these three standalone independent clauses or standalone sentences into their own space.
Whitney: Wow. And when I see that it's like, oh, that, when they're standing alone, it's so choppy. Mm-hmm. It just does not flow. Yeah.
So now I'm, liking the longer sentence better and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I need these ideas to come together with those conjunctions for me as a reader 'cause otherwise it's just very choppy.
Travis: Choppy. Yeah, it is. Absolutely. And I think it's something that. We might recognize in our students at certain times of the school year, even for some toward the end of the school year, we still have students who maybe have trouble intuitively or [00:20:00] naturally connecting their ideas together. They have the thoughts, but they come out in choppy chunks.
This is a great way of elevating what making different connections between these ideas could look like. I think if we wanted to contrast, this is a really impactful way to be able to contrast, to elevate that comma and that conjunction, how those could be powerful.
Whitney: Yeah, and it's interesting to take the compare contrast in this way rather than looking at a whole nother sentence. Mm-hmm. Just take really. Doing some deeper conversations into why we use those conjunctions. I love this idea.
Travis: Yeah. And then if we wanted to, because I. I don't think we could say this enough: there is a lot of opportunity for flexibility.
Whitney: Yes.
Travis: In each of these invitations for you as a teacher to meet your students' needs. If I think that I would rather elevate a structure that looks the same, maybe with some different wording, another thing that I could do is I could share another compound sentence that has that same structure of three independent ideas connected with two commas in conjunctions. Now, in this case, I chose something that I might use. This is another crossover and a hack into our classroom practice. I'm gonna be in my classroom doing First Chapter Friday reads every Friday. If not that Friday, I might cross it over into Thursday or Monday, depending on what we have going on in school.
But in this case, I found as I was previewing a First Chapter Friday, I found that Crystal Allen, the author between Two Brothers. This book right here that I've got, Ooh, there it is. Mm-hmm. In reverse, Between Two Brothers. She uses a few of these advanced compound sentences. So there are I think three that I found in [00:22:00] chapter one alone.
I thought that this was a great way to elevate either before or after this read aloud of the first chapter. Mm-hmm. Again, I want to use it to entice my students to choose some different independent reading options they might not necessarily gravitate toward without knowing about it, but here we go. Now we can insert just this little piece into our work with Patterns of Power.
Whitney: What I love about this one is again, just thinking through the student's eyes, is this sentence is the same structure, but it doesn't look as long. Yeah. It doesn't look as intimidating. I feel like when it comes to imitating, I could imitate this one. Whereas the Aquaponics one, I'm sure I could, but it's going to take me some time and it's going to it, For a lot of students it might be like can't do that. Whereas yeah, compare contrast gives them another option for that same that same structure, but maybe more reachable for some students.
Travis: And that's always something on our minds is how do we move toward imitation in a way that's gonna be sustainable, where students feel like it's just the right amount of challenge for them, but they still can find success
So this to me, this is in a piece of the, text where, the main character, Isaiah. It's his birthday in chapter one. He just got a new phone and he's taken a family picture. And so this is what happens in the family picture. Seth, his older brother, checking his phone, dad is making breakfast, so he is trying to steal a piece of bacon. Mom's stopping him from doing it right by grabbing his wrist.
So this to me is a, uh, feels like a sustainable move into imitation where we could connect to a picture, we could connect to something on their phone, a picture that [00:24:00] they've taken as a way to imitate this, this structure. Much more like
Whitney: visualizing a scene whether it's a scene, yeah. A movie or a scene from their own life, or a scene from a book they're reading, but just really doing some visualizing there and then turning around and writing a sentence about it.
Travis: Yes. So options. Let me just share two more. So, oh, okay. This. Yeah, this first one is if we wanted to cross over into a different genre, here's a little poetry love. If we wanted to get into some Robert Frost, " The Road Not Taken," ends with a great advanced compound sentence. There is one that might be interesting. I think it could also be a little bit more approachable for imitation. Alright, this next is another from Crystal Allen's between two brothers, this is where he is.
So the setting, they live on a farm and he's starting by feeding his, animals on the farm. So he's doing a little, some dance moves for his pigs as he is feeding them. Very cute. I love it. Such a fun story. Yes. And
Whitney: it's, that's more first person. So both of those are, which is interesting.
Travis: This would be a great way of this, second version of showing how we could move story along. Yes, we could use this advanced compound sentence structure to move our story along. Because that's really, this takes him from one place from one part of the farm to another because of the pigs not really being into his moves.
Whitney: Mm-hmm. And I like the Robert Frost one, 'cause it uses the conjunction AND. Still the advanced compound sentence, but now you're easing in twice. So that's a nice contrast too, like that.
Travis: Yeah. So if you are thinking like there has to be a certain [00:26:00] structure in the compare and contrast, just know that all these different options that we've highlighted for you, we want to move our students into understanding.
So this is, there are various ways that we could do that. We just have. Elevated a few different options for how we might do that.
Whitney: And really, you could even take two of these. You could take the one where it breaks the sentences apart and they see the choppiness of it, and then immediately you could go into one of these other options for them to look at. Now that they have a visual of why we use that structure, and then they can look at another one to help cement that structure with different contexts as they think about imitating.
Travis: That's really smart. Mm-hmm. That's great thinking. Love that.
Whitney: Because you could easily do that too. It doesn't have to be just one compare contrast. And it doesn't need to go overboard and you spending your whole period comparing and contrasting, but I think it's okay to break it down, take a look at it, and then share another example too.
Travis: Yeah. Remembering that around 10 minutes for each of these is really impactful. It keeps kids focused beyond 10 minutes. Oftentimes that devolves into not really productive conversation, at least in most of my experiences. So if we need to bring this across over two days, I think this is something important to think about. Mm-hmm. The options that you have. But yeah, that was really smart that you brought that up of.
Maybe a couple days of compare contrast. More than one.
All right, so we've covered a lot of ground today in our planning for this middle school Patterns of Power Lesson on advanced compound sentences. We've dug into our focus phrases, explored the informational text about aquaponics titled "Farms of the Future," which you can find in the show notes or through CommonLit.
And we've looked at different options for comparing and contrasting these sentence structures. Next time Whitney and I will get right into the invitations to imitate suggestions for [00:28:00] setting up novel ways to share and celebrate application, and the final editing conversations to wrap up the planning of this lesson set.
Looking forward to continuing to learn together. See you then.
What's Coming in Part Two?
In our next session, Whitney and I will complete the planning process for this middle school Patterns of Power lesson. We'll focus on:
Invitation to Imitate: How students can create their own advanced compound sentences
Share and Celebrate: Novel ways to showcase student work
Application: Connecting compound sentences to authentic writing
Editing Conversations: Final refinements to wrap up the lesson
Stay tuned for part two, where we'll bring all these elements together into a complete lesson plan you can use in your 6-8 classroom!
Looking for more resources? Check the show notes for links to the "Farms of the Future" article on CommonLit, as well as references to Patterns of Power for Middle School (the green book), lesson 5.3 starting on page 140.
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