We can move students past the mere regurgitation of knowledge and toward making inferences by encouraging them to use complex sentences. Yet adding depth and distinction to student essays isn’t an insurmountable challenge. Many students have been taught to justify their examples and evidence using sentence starters like: “This shows that.” or “This evidence relates back to my thesis because.” These stems do provide a foundation for developing writers, but they have drawbacks: They often lead young writers to merely repeat what they’ve already stated instead of moving their ideas forward or providing depth. Moving from Mere Explanation to Inference Rather than speaking in the abstract, I find it easier to provide effective feedback and direction when I have a student’s concrete attempt to refer to. Without a formal discussion about independent and dependent clauses, I simply tell my eighth graders to look at the complex sentence starters and examples I provide them, and to try out the ones that seem the most logical way to convey the important idea they want to express. But with lots of modeling and feedback, every student should meet the Common Core standards of producing simple, compound, and complex sentences beginning in grade 3 and varying sentence patterns for “meaning, reader/listener interest, and style” beginning in grade 6.Ĭreating complex sentences is different from taking two simple sentences and combining them with a conjunction to form a compound sentence. This is not to say there won’t be a long learning curve as students practice writing more sophisticated sentences. When students join two related ideas in one sentence, writing refinement and depth begin to occur.
#Use insurmountable in a sentence how to#
Showing them how to use complex sentences to make inferences can transform students’ attitudes about and achievement with writing. You can give your students tools that allow them dazzle you with their eloquence, even when their viewpoints are similar.
But this certainly doesn’t necessitate each essay being identical to the next in form and substance. When every student writes on the same topic, you often see a limited number of examples and pieces of evidence supporting their similar theses. Have you ever dreaded grading a pile of upward of 150 essays you assumed would be filled with the uninspired ramblings of middle school students who couldn’t care less about the craft of writing, let alone the topic of their composition?
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