And let's remember that the kids you have may have been "taught" "sentence punctuation" by filling out worksheets with a sentence in each item that they have to rewrite, turning the lowercase letter into a capital and putting the period after the last word. Of course, that teaches them nothing but worksheet completion. If you do have some of those kids, they need to go back and write just like first graders write to develop fluency. Basically, you then separate the skill into writing and editing. When they have a fair amount of text, it really helps to interject something kinesthetic/dramatic/physical as a device. Whatever that is, it helps to have the student read their text aloud, starting with you as the audience/partner, then with a peer as a partner, then alone, still out loud. The "gimmick" could be a finger snap, a finger tap on the table, a wrinkle of the nose, whatever. It's the reading aloud that seems to make a difference. What is actually happening here is they are writers reading, seeking out the reciprocity. So, it might be like this: the bee flew (snap) away to (snap) the beehive. (Snap) Often, you first get a look of incredulous response like, "who the heck wrote that? "The bee flew. Away to. The beehive." Huh? Or, more often, "The little girls jumped rope and ate ice cream and then the went to town and then they saw a movie and the movie was Bam and it was good and then they got popcorn"(snap). When a child reads that aloud, you get the same surprised response. So you prompt and by requesting that they tell you what the first thing was the writer tells about. Likely he/she will say, "the little girls jumped rope and then ate ice cream" (snap) They know that's what happened first, they'll know what happened next. Etcetera. I believe the key is reading it aloud (or whisper-reading). It teaches them to use metacognition and write while thinking as a reader. Of course, at the same time, you plan mini-lessons for the group about sentence combining, sentence fragments, and other helpful techniques. I guess my point is that the skill your kids are missing simply can't be taught out of context (actual writing), and finally, THEIR writing. They need to see making sentences modeled, done with a peer, and finally alone, but unless its their own text, there's very little transfer--as you have found. What WON'T work is for the teacher to "correct" the child's writing and hand it to her without comment. That proves the teacher is a good editor, but does nothing to further the child as a writer. It's a hard, hard concept. If you don't have Ralph Fletcher and Jennifer Jacobsen, Lori Jamison Rog, run and get them. With your grade level, you would probably like to use both levels of her books. Good luck.
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