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Resources for Teaching Better Sentence Fluency
WritingFix offers free-to-use and peruse resources on the following topics. Click a link below to see our entire collection of lessons and resources for each of these trait-based skills:
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What's Sentence Fluency?
A writer thinks about these specific sub-skills when working on the trait of sentence fluency during the writing process:
- A variety of sentence beginnings are used
- A variety of sentence lengths are used
- Complex and simple sentences are used to promote rhythm in the language
- A variety of transitions are used
- When reading the writing aloud, the sentences sound natural
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WritingFix's 6-Trait Poster Set
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WritingFix's Sentence Fluency Post-Its
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Free Poster Resource for your Classroom:
Just as white clouds float peacefully in the sky, or thunder clouds arrive with alarm, sentences and phrases float through a piece of writing. Do you want your SENTENCE FLUENCY to be subtle or alarming?
This set of seven posters was created collectively by Dena Harrison, Mary Dunton, Nancy Thomas, Corbett Harrison, and Vivian Olds of the Northern Nevada Writing Project.
- Click here to open and print WritingFix's 7-page poster set, inspired by our "Building a House" metaphor.
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WritingFix offers a free template of Sentence Fluency Post-It sized notes. These can either be printed on orange colored paper and cut out and stapled to students' drafts, or you can--if you dare--attempt to print them on real 3 x 3 Post-It Notes.
These Post-It Notes were created by Corbett Harrison of the Northern Nevada Writing Project.
- Click here to open and print a sheet of six sentence fluency revision post-its.
- Click here to visit WritingFix's Post-It homepage, where you can find instruction on printing our post-its on actual Post-It notes.
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Building a 6-Trait Mentor Text library for your classroom or your school's library?
Six "Mentor Text" Suggestions for the Trait of Sentence Fluency
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(Click here to access WritingFix's entire bibliography of cited picture books and chapter books.)
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Below are three sentence fluency "mentor text" suggestions from the
WritingFix Website:
(Click the words lesson link after each suggestion below to access the lesson.) |
Below are three sentence fluency "mentor text" suggestions from the
NNWP's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide:
(Click here to find out how to order this awesome resource from the NNWP.) |
 1. Debbie Allen's Dancing in the Wings celebrates the participial phrase as a technique for varying sentence beginnings and sentence rhythm. Sitting at a sentence's beginning, a participial phrase (like the one in italics) provides additional action to any sentence. A participial phrase can also end a sentence, resting comfortably right before the period. An advanced writer, inserting a participial phrase in between a complete sentence, can really affect the rhythm and flow of words. Let Allen's book show off the power of participial phrases. Then challenge student writers to create descriptions that use (but don't over-use) this technique for improving sentence fluency. Click on this lesson link to see WritingFix's free-to-use lesson suggestion for this mentor text. |
 1. Meanwhile... by Jules Feiffer will appeal to all your students, but especially to those boys who will appreciate its comic-book style. As suggested in the Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide, discuss the fact that Feiffer practically turns the book's transition word--meanwhile-- into a living and breathing character that helps tell the story. Pass out a list of transition words and challenge your students to personify one, two, or three transition words based on their meaning. What kind of person would as a matter of fact be? Inspire your writers to either turn their transitions into actual characters that can be displayed on a class bulletin board, or to create a story (like Meanwhile...) that creatively uses one transition as though it's a character in the story. This activity is a creative way to explore transitions that may be new to them.
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 2. First shared at the NNWP's Spring Poetry Festival in 2004, this on-line lesson encourages a simple notion: explore sentence fluency by crafting original lyrics to familiar tunes. Take Me Out of the Bathtub and Other Silly Dilly Songs by Alan Katz is a perfect mentor text to show students how this works if it's done thoughtfully. Point out how Katz has carefully chosen multi-syllable words that don't take away from the original song's rhythm; this is a skill that doesn't happen immediately. If you use this assignment with your students, be sure to make time when students get to hone their sentences in revision to match their chosen song's original rhythm even better. Click on this lesson link to see WritingFix's free-to-use lesson suggestion for this mentor text.
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 2. Talk about well-written! Robert Burleigh's Hoops is an rhythmic and flowing poem-in-the-form-of-prose that examines a basketball game with creative use of language. With your students, study this book's use of words, especially focusing on the variety of sentence lengths and sentence beginnings. Brainstorm a list of sporting events and recess activities that might be written about in a similar way. As a class, create a piece of prose-poetry together, remembering to revisit several of Burleigh's pages for sentence fluency inspiration. Then have students create original Hoops-like passages, using other activities from the brainstorm. |
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 3. All the Places to Love by Patricia MacLachlan stands out as one of the most beautifully written memoirs in picture book form. MacLachlan's skill with crafting perfect sentences shines so strongly here. Discuss with your students her subtle and effective use of prepositional phrases to keep her ideas moving and her words flowing. Challenge your student writers to revise a rough draft about a special day to them with subtle and effective use of prepositions. Click on this lesson link to see WritingFix's free-to-use lesson suggestion for this mentor text |
 3. As suggested in the Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide, give students lots of opportunities to craft new words to rhythmic writing they are already familiar with. This will help them begin to understand the complexity of rhythm as it pertains to high-quality sentence fluency. The 13 Nights of Halloween by Rebecca Dickinson is an original version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" that might just inspire your students to craft rhythmic and flowing words that go with a different holiday or a different event. |
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Varying Sentence Beginnings
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Webmaster's favorite sentence beginnings resource:
Who/What/Where/When Games:
Circus Theme
Most adverbs are not -ly words. Most adverbs actually take the form of prepositional phrases, telling us when and where a verb occurred.
The Who/What/Where/When games (see all of them below) have student writers press four buttons, and the students always end up with a sentence. The prompt then challenges students to move the two adverbial phrases to different spots in a sentence, listening for the sentence that sounds the best.
Once the students have an interesting-sounding sentence, they use it as the first line, the last line, or the middle line of a story or description.
WritingFix has eight W/W/W/W themes, but I am partial to the circus theme; I think it makes the best sentences.
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The two most common English words that start our sentences? I and The. If you currently have a classroom of students, you know this to be true.
It's such a simple lesson to ask students to revisit their drafts by circling the first words of their sentences, then asking, "Did you think about starting with a variety of words?" Most of them haven't thought about this, and the question becomes the catalyst for a new way to think about revising writing.
Here is our current collection of prompts and lessons to challenge students to begin their sentences differently.
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Left-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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Varying Sentence Structures and Lengths
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I attended a presentation by a scientist/author Sneed B. Collard many years back. His scientific way of thinking about writing appealed to me a lot.
He explained how his editor suggested that he count the words in his sentences, writing the numbers in the margins. To achieve sentence rhythm, he then attempted to revise his sentences so they went back and forth between longer and shorter sentences.
I taught this technique to my students, and I couldn't believe how their sentence fluency improved.
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Webmaster's favorite varying sentence lengths lesson:
Counting Sentences' Words:
inspired by Jane Yolen's picture book Owl Moon.
Jane Yolen's writing is so beautiful. Her words flow seamlessly, and every image comes across as poetry.
WritingFix's lesson that uses Owl Moon has students analyze her sentences' lengths, which follow no predictable pattern but certainly flow back and forth between simple and complex. Students then create a descriptive paragraph that flows.
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
- Serendipitous Short Little Sentences (undergoing revision)
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Left-Brained Writing Prompts:
- The 99-word story (undergoing revision)
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
- In 2009, we will be launching a new collection of poetry and lyric-inspired writing prompts. Check back with us soon.
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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Playing with Sentence Rhythm
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Webmaster's favorite sentence rhythm resource:
Impersonating Great Poets:
inspired by Jon Scieszka's picture book Science Verse
I wish I could be as clever as Jon Scieszka. His book, Science Verse, explores scientific concepts, using the rhythm of famous poetry and famous tunes we've all sung.
The on-line lesson has students choose a topic they're interested in (not necessarily science) and then write their own "poem" that borrows one of the rhythms that Scieszka has had fun with in his book. Click on the image above to access the lesson.
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Shakespeare had his iambs. Hawthorne's words impersonated war drums. Poe wanted his sentence rhythm to sound like that Tell-Tale Heart. The greats knew how to pick a rhythm and "flow" with it!
The world contains great examples of innovative uses of word rhythm. This section of prompts and lessons has students react to already-established rhythms and then create original rhythms of their own.
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Left-Brained Writing Prompts:
- Lyrics for the classics (undergoing revision)
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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Varying Transitions and Conjunctions
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You know the students I'm talking about! And and then seem to be the only transitions and conjunctions they know how to use. Such a lack of variety only hampers sentence fluency, and students need to be taught this.
This section of lessons and resources provides ideas for helping student writers see the variety of other words that exist and do the same thing as and and then.
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Webmaster's favorite transition/conjunction resource:
This section is the one we are currently developing to be able to provide even more depth with the trait of sentence fluency.
Feel free to explore the resources we have below, but know that this section will grow by leaps and bounds during 2009.
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Right-Brained Writing Prompts:
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Left-Brained Writing Tools:
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Picture Book Inspired Lessons:
- Personified Transitions: inspired by Jules Feiffer's picture book Meanwhile... (undergoing revision)
- Adverbs as Conjunctions: inspired by Remy Charlip's picture book Fortunately (undergoing revision)
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Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:
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Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:
- In 2009, we will be launching a new collection of poetry and lyric-inspired writing prompts. Check back with us soon.
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Literature Inspired Lessons:
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The Sentence Fluency Chalkboard
(WritingFix users: share an idea you have for teaching sentence fluency)
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The following introduction comes from the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide (click 
