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Vendor
Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
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SENTENCE

Geraldine Woods

A Period-to-Period Guide to Building Better Readers and Writers

A remarkable guide that focuses on the primary building block of great writing: the sentence.
Sometimes it's better to start small, with a sentence.
Every English teacher has experienced it: students staring at an empty page, seemingly paralyzed by a writing assignment. When this happens, it may be time to back off from the Big Idea approach to the art of reading and writing, and zero in on a single sentence.
In this book, a master teacher offers a complete guide to a sentence-level approach. Helping students recognize the techniques that make sentences great is the first step, and there are plenty of examples here from YA novels, TV shows, and song lyrics as well as the novels, poetry, and nonfiction pieces that form the canon of middle and high school reading lists.
Lesson plans include activities to introduce the featured element of style; questions to guide students in their analysis; and writing prompts and activities to spark students' interest and creativity.

With this Little-to-Big strategy, students move quickly from analysis of the words between two periods to the universe of ideas of which that sentence is a part. They may even be eager to write their own.


Geraldine Woods has taught English at every level from fifth grade through Advanced Placement. She is the author of more than 50 nonfiction books for adults and children, including English Grammar for Dummies, which has been translated into ten languages. Her most recent book is 25 Great Sentences. She lives in New York City.
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Book

Published 2021-03-16 by Norto

Comments

As a writing teacher for over 30 years, I appreciate Woods' diverse set of examples and insightful analysis. Whether you're looking for a way to fill a few minutes at the end of class or build an entire session around one sentence, this book has you covered.

With clarity her cause and passion her method, Geraldine Woods clarifies the workings of one of our most significant and old-time technologies: the sentence. That she curates from vivid contemporary sources will spark the stellar writer in her readers.

In an age of tweets and declining readership, Woods makes a compelling case for the relationship between the sentence and how we speak, write, and listen to one another. Never before has the teaching of grammar, syntax, diction, and the literary imagination felt closer to pure poetry than in this beautifully crafted book!

Woods does teachers a great service by offering this book. She not only serves up an instructional guide for how to help students understand the importance of sentence crafting, she also gives numerous practical examples and lesson suggestions.

Woods provides literally hundreds of sentences (categorized for thematic unit use) as examples with teaching ideas for immediate classroom use. This book will be one that I reach to again and again for ideas and inspiration.