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Saturday, 7 September 2013

More dragons: developing sentence structure using online texts


If you’re running with the theme of dragons, then a great online text is ‘A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons’.  Containing extracts from the book, this online resource contains a number of pages which provide descriptions and details about some of the deadly dragons. 

I would use this text to help children develop:
·         Description (linked to adjective, simile and noun phrase tools in the Sentence Toolkit).  This could range from adding one or two adjectives to describe an attribute, to building up more subtle descriptions, e.g. ‘all shades of brown’; ‘as black as your darkest nightmare’.  It could also be used to help the children understand the difference between description suitable for narrative and the more precise description used in non-fiction texts (although this is still a fantasy based text, so contains some narrative-like description in places).
·         Punctuation (screwdrivers in the Sentence Toolkit).  There are some good examples in this text demonstrating correct use of commas in lists and to demarcate clauses, but also use of hyphens, brackets and dashes.  However, there is perhaps rather more use of ellipses than you would want to see in your children’s writing.

Once you have investigated the dragons with the children and explored the sentence structures and punctuation you want to develop, children could design their own dragons.  These could then be used to compile a group or class book of more deadly dragons.

Poppy has designed her dragon below.  I would use a picture such as this for shared writing, so that I could model writing each stage of the description and the detailed paragraph.


To see other texts recommended on this blog, click here.  And for more Texts that Teach, check out this link.

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