Sentence+Fluency

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 * Sentence Fluency**

Sentence fluency is the ability to add grace and style to the writer's work. The sentence should be easy to read aloud. They should be varied in length and structure. The writer needs to be certain to hear how the words play to the ear. A way to teach fluency is to read written pieces to your students. When choosing the pieces of work to read, decide on a piece that has beautiful, elaborate writing. Another type of writing to read to your students is one that is not fluent. THis can help the students hear what a good fluent paper should sound like. Another aspect of having fluent writing, is to have sentences of different lengths. The class can do a "Crunch the Numbers" activity. This activity has the students count how many words are in each sentence. The student then has to decide if the passage has a good variety of sentence lengths. The students will come to find that longer is not always better.


 * ~ **Sentence Fluency Picture Books** ||
 * ~ __Catwings__ by Ursula LeGuin ||
 * ~ __Chicka Chicka Boom Boom__ by Bill Martin ||
 * ~ __Flower Garden__ by Eve Bunting ||
 * ~ __Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices__ by Paul Fleishman ||
 * ~ __My Backpack__ by Eve Bunting ||
 * ~ __The Night Before Christmas__ by Clement C. Moore Activities: ||~  ||
 * ~ * Reading poetry aloud is something that students find they truly enjoy. It will also help them tune their ear to good sentence fluency. ||
 * ~ * After reading many books with sentence fluency students start to see a variation in sentence beginnings. Have students brainstorm some catchy sentence beginnings. Write these beginnings on the board and have students chose four to six beginnings to finish in the form of a paragraph. At the same time the teacher uses only one of beginnings and writes a paragraph. Once everyone is finished writing share the teachers versus some of the other students. Question the students on what they noticed and can learn from the activity. ||
 * ~ * Use poetry to give students practice reading aloud and break it up into parts for a choral reading. Have the small group present their choral reading to the class.
 * ~ * Use poetry to give students practice reading aloud and break it up into parts for a choral reading. Have the small group present their choral reading to the class.

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