Standard 5: Language

Students will apply knowledge of grammar and rhetorical style to reading and writing. 

11.5.W.2 Students will compose simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences and questions, including the use of phrases and clauses, to signal differing relationships among ideas. 

Student Actions 

Teacher Actions 

• Students will intentionally use a variety of phrases and clauses and sentence structures to indicate how ideas are related.

• Teacher's model for students how using different phrases and clauses enhances readability.
• Teacher's model for students how using different sentence types enhances readability.
• Teachers provide students with opportunities to practice writing different phrases, clauses, and sentence structures.
• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback on their use of different phrases and clauses, and sentence structures.

Supporting Resources 

Teacher Insights

• Purdue OWL: Sentence Types
• University of Wisconsin Writing Center: Improving Style Using Transitions
• Reading Rockets/Sentence Combining
• NCTE/Sentence Combining: Building Skills through Reading and Writing 

• As a writing objective, the goal is for students to be able to effectively and intentionally use a variety of sentence types that transition effectively from one idea to the next.

• A simple sentence contains one independent clause. An independent clause is a group of words that can stand alone as a complete thought.

• Ex: English class is fun.

• A compound sentence has more than one independent clauses joined together with appropriate punctuation and/or conjunctions.

• Ex: English class is fun, but I also enjoy math.

• A complex sentence has one independent clause and at least one dependent clause (a group of words with a subject and verb but cannot stand alone as a complete thought).

• Ex. English class is fun because our language is interesting.

• A compound-complex sentence has more than one independent clauses and at least one dependent clause.

• Ex: English class is fun, but I also enjoy math because numbers don’t have as many exceptions to the rules.

• It is important to emphasize the relationship between ideas when determining how to combine independent clauses. Students will often memorize the methods of combining sentences but miss the idea behind linking ideas together. Be sure to guide them in when ideas should not be combined into one sentence.

• Signaling differing relationships among ideas involves fluid transitions from one idea to the next.

• The University of Wisconsin Writing Center provides a list of transition words categorized by their function. 

Due to recursive nature of the standards, it is essential that teachers are aware of how all objectives within and between strands work together for optimal instruction.