Silly Sentence Sticky Sticks

Part of my job is to teach grade 3’s and grade 4’s to write: sentences, paragraphs and stories. I made these Sticky Sticks awhile ago for preschoolers, but turned it into silly sentence sticky sticks for a lesson on sentence structure.
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 I simply added words to the sticky sticks: nouns(person/animal), verbs, adverbs(which we used later on), place nouns, and time words. (One could add adjectives too.)

I explained to the students the order of this simple sentence: Who, What, Where, When. (Obviously, one do get other types of sentences, but for this lesson, we focussed on this order)

I had each one take a turn to pull one of each colour(we started with the yellow, red, green and blue first), figure out the sentence and stick it together to form the sentence. This did take a few moments, since the sentences were scrambled up and made up silly, nonsense sentences. Then the person read the sentence out loud. After each one had a turn we added the adverbs to make the sentence longer. I did not stay with one writing tense, so they had to figure out how to correct it when reading it aloud. (Note:Some grammer also needed adjusting when the sentences were scrambled up)

   
The students then had to make write down their own silly sentences, following the order, and adding adjectives/adverbs into the sentences. Afterwards each one had a turn to read his/her silly sentences.
 
Younger learners, or struggling writers, could stay with the basic order of the sentence, and perhaps be given a few nouns, verbs, time words to choose from when making their own sentences.

This simple way of using sticky sticks makes learning fun for students, and bringing a silly note into the lesson, even more so.

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