Lesson 9 was all about Varying Sentence Structure - Sentence Beginnings, and Sentence Length! We began by drawing a blank chart titled "Sentence Beginnings." We practiced with a sample paragraph, then students looked through their own writing and completed the chart on their own. (Left column = first word, right column = check marks for how many times s/he used that word...) We then revised our own writing - we changed the beginnings of any sentences that had a first word that was unnecessarily repeated. Next, we went on to sentence length. Again, students drew a chart (left column = how many words, right column = how many sentences have that many words). We practiced with a sample paragraph, then students looked at their own writing and revised as needed. After all this work, we completed another lesson - Lesson 10, Playing with Voice in Dialogue. First we brainstormed questions, then wrote a short dialogue between two characters in our stories for practice. We then wrote our third rising action event: Write your story's third rising action event. Remember to vary sentence lengths and beginnings as you are writing, or go back and add variety when you are done.

Homework:
* Read 20 min./blog by Sunday night.