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WritingFix: Sentence Fluency...one of the 6 writing traits
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The Writing Traits: Sentence Fluency
helping your students "go deep" with sentence variety during classroom writing instruction

This page's introduction comes from the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide (click here for details on ordering this print resource): I used to ask my students to respond to the same two questions nine or ten times during a school year: “As a writer, which is currently your best writing trait? Which trait is currently making you flounder?” My students learned quickly that every writer has a different strength and a different struggle. My students learned quickly that the traits that caused you to struggle one month might become your best traits later on. This was my indicator that I was doing the right thing with traits; my students were discovering the traits of writing as a topic that needs to be constantly revisited and reconsidered. Such was evidence my students were beginning to think deeply using writing.

I ask adults these same two questions during writing traits trainings. Unlike my student writers, adults feel pretty good about their conventions, their organization, and their idea development. After learning about the six traits in depth, most of the adult writers I work with claim they could use more work on their personal sentence fluency. Looking at my own writing, I feel the same. sentence fluency is the trait that challenges most of the adults I work with. Me included.

I find that interesting.

See…I always found sentence fluency the easiest of the 6 traits to make my students analyze. I could very effectively help my writers recognize and borrow sentence fluency techniques from other authors. Even though it’s my personal challenge trait, I find it easy to teach it to others.

I find that interesting.

I learned early on (from an excellent teacher) that sentences can be analyzed and thought about in a very logical (almost mathematical) way. Sentences are really just patterns and formulas, and there are plentiful patterns to choose from in our complex language. Using a variety of patterns and formulas is a simple way to be sure you have sentence fluency in your writing. Students—who for the most part have a very limited awareness of these patterns and variations—can be taught to look for them and to, more importantly, try them out in their own writing. sentence fluency, to me, was all about making students aware of the variety of ways to say the same series of words, then asking them to practice with variety. I practiced alongside them. I mastered the patterns I chose to teach them. And yet, my own sentence fluency always needs a little more work.

I find that interesting.

So…here’s what I’ve concluded about sentence fluency. Our language is complex. While it can be simplified into an explanation of word patterns, that simplification only begins to make us aware of the actual complexity that exists. Human beings are even more complex than our language. Put the complex language into a competent writer’s hands, and new patterns hatch all over the place. Language never stops growing. The possibilities remain endless.

As an adult learner and writer, I am more aware than my students of the varietal endlessness of sentence structures. While I have collected a lot of personal sentence patterns and formulas I like, I still see new ones being crafted by friends and published authors. I am envious. I see language being crafted well. I recognize that I could never craft it quite as beautifully or efficiently. And that’s okay. My job as teacher—sometimes—is to begin my students’ process of recognizing patterns, not giving them every pattern that exists.

I need sentence fluency to challenge my notion of myself as a writer. If we are life-long learners, we all need a trait like that in our lives. Do you know what your trait is?

WritingFix's Sentence Fluency Categories
WritingFix offers resources on the following sub-skills of sentence fluency. Click a link below to see our entire collection of lessons and resources for each of these trait-based skills:

What's Sentence Fluency?
A writer thinks about these bullets when working on the trait of sentence fluency:

  • 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 words sound natural
WritingFix's 6-Trait Poster Set
WritingFix's Trait Post-Its

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.

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 WritingFix's 7-page poster set, inspired by our "Building a House" metaphor.
  • 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.
Varying Sentence Beginnings

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.

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.

Right-Brained Writing Prompts:

Left-Brained Writing Prompts:

Picture Book Inspired Lessons:

Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:

Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:

Literature Inspired Lessons:
Varying Sentence Structures and Lengths

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.

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.

Right-Brained Writing Prompts:

  • Serendipitous Short Little Sentences (undergoing revision)

Left-Brained Writing Prompts:

  • The 99-word story (undergoing revision)

Picture Book Inspired Lessons:

Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:

Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:

  • In Spring of 2008, we will be launching a new collection of poetry and lyric-inspired writing prompts. Check back with us soon.

Literature Inspired Lessons:

Playing with Sentence Rhythm

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.

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.

Right-Brained Writing Prompts:

Left-Brained Writing Prompts:

  • Lyrics for the classics (undergoing revision)

Picture Book Inspired Lessons:

Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:

Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:

Literature Inspired Lessons:

Varying Transitions and Conjunctions

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.

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 2008.

Right-Brained Writing Prompts:

Left-Brained Writing Tools:

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)

Chapter Book Inspired Lessons:

Poetry & Lyric Inspired Lessons:

  • In Spring of 2008, we will be launching a new collection of poetry and lyric-inspired writing prompts. Check back with us soon.

Literature Inspired Lessons:

   

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