Combining Sentences: Fun with Grammar

Patchwork

1. Form a team of four students. Give each person a number, 1-4. Take a few pieces of paper and tear them into strips. Give each person a strip.

2. On the strip of paper, quickly draw the part of a body that the directions describe for your number. Cover your work so that your team members don't see what you're doing:

• Student #1 -- a head and neck
• Student #2 -- from shoulders to waist
• Student #3 -- from hips to thighs
• Student #4 -- from knees to toes

3. After about one minute, show each other your drawings and fit them together.

4. Reassign the four numbers, pass around more strips, and do this again.

5. Now work with sentences instead of bodies. Decide on your numbers, pass around new strips, and on your strip, write the sentence part that the directions describe for your number.

• Student #1 -- a dependent clause beginning with when, before, or after and using a verb in the simple past tense
• Student #2 -- an independent clause using a simple past tense verb
• Student #3 -- a string of connected prepositional phrases ending with a person's name
• Student #4 -- a dependent clause beginning with who and using the simple past tense

6. When you're all finished with your parts, show them to each other and fit them together in order. You may have to make some adjustments (some prepositions simply won't fit with the previous phrase, some pronouns will need gender or number changes, and so on) and then read the results to the rest of the class.

7. Reassign the four numbers, pass around more strips, and do this again. Press here to see two sentences from previous rounds of this game.

CONTENTS MAIN PAGE 7.1 Your Writing 7.2 Compounding Whole Sentences 7.3 Sentence Combining Summary 7.4 Mixing Methods to Combine Sentences 7.5 Review and Practice 7.6 Fun With Grammar: Patchwork 7.7 Return to Your Writing 7.8 Mastery Test