In the first post of this series, I explained how I came across 'The Writing Revolution' and its key principles. This post will look at one of the methods: Expanded Sentences.
One of the key principles of 'The Writing Revolution' is that sentences are the building blocks of all writing. As a pianist, I know that the only way to get better at playing complex pieces is to practise drills, such as scales, and to take the piece bar by bar, phrase by phrase, or hand by hand. Simply playing the piece from start to finish is unlikely to lead to marked improvement. It's exactly the same when writing. Simply writing paragraphs and essays over and over again is unlikely to lead to improved paragraphs and essays. Practising writing at sentence level and bringing these sentence structures into paragraphs will.
The sentence expansion method requires students to plan and write a carefully constructed sentence. The planning process introduces what 'The Writing Revolution' calls a "sentence kernel". It is a short sentence that doesn't give much information. For example:
He presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced.
Inevitably, when reading this sentence, we ourselves have lots of questions:
Who does this?
When?
How does he do this?
Why does he do this?
Students are required to plan their answers to a selection of these questions, before piecing together the expanded sentence. The questions you use within the task will depend on the content students are writing about and what knowledge of writing you particularly want to hone in on.
In the English department, we have used the expanded sentence task to help us improve three aspects of analytical writing:
(1) Demonstrating an understanding of what happens when
(2) Embedding quotations
(3) Making explicit comments about the writer's intentions
(1) Demonstrating an understanding of what happens when
In our department, we use the 'when?' question to refer to a specific moment within the text. We've found that introducing this has equipped students to explore the development of a theme or character throughout a text. It has also helped students who struggle to put pen to paper to know how to start as they've internalised the idea that you can always start an analytical sentence with 'when'.
Planning:
He presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced.
When? inspector's interrogation
Who? Priestley
Expanded sentence (always start with the 'when'):
During the inspector's interrogation, Priestley presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced.
(2) Embedding quotations
We’ve used the 'how?' question to offer a quotation or reference that exemplifies HOW a writer does something. We identified embedding quotations as a hinge concept; in order to move students' writing away from phrases such as 'this is shown in the quotation' or 'evidence to support this is', we need to explicitly teach students how to embed quotations in their sentences. While the expanded sentence task is not foolproof, and is certainly not the only way to do this, it offers a very good starting point.
Planning:
He presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced.
When? inspector's interrogation
Who? Priestley
How? working class women = 'girls of that class'
Expanded sentence:
During the inspector's interrogation, Priestley presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced by having her refer to working class women as 'girls of that class'.
There is scope, within the 'how' to explore more around the writer's methods by adding an extra stage into the planning. This is something we have tried when teaching students how to write a lot about a little. We tend to learn short quotations and explore how to write about those in depth. This will result in additional sentences, in order to avoid long sentences that run on about lots of things.
Planning:
He presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced.
When? inspector's interrogation
Who? Priestley
How? working class women = 'girls of that class'
1. 'girls' = patronises working classes
2. 'that class' = groups all working class girls together
Expanded sentence:
During the inspector's interrogation, Priestley presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced by having her refer to working class women as 'girls of that class'. Priestley's use of the word 'girls' indicates that Sybil patronises the working classes, while the words 'that class' suggest that she groups all working class girls together.
(3) Making explicit comments about the writer's intentions.
We’ve used the 'why?' question to explore WHY a writer makes certain choices. Considering the 'why' is an important part of developing students' disciplinary knowledge. It's important, therefore, that writing about 'why' is preceded by discussion as a class, enabling students to explore and debate interpretations before writing about them. Teaching of the 'why' can also be combined with teaching of tentative language, giving students the tools with which to offer tentative interpretations of the text.
Planning:
He presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced.
When? inspector's interrogation
Who? Priestley
How? working class women = 'girls of that class'
Why? criticise private charities in 1912 ruled by prejudiced wealthy people with no genuine interest in helping the poor
Expanded sentence(s): (note: we tend to introduce the why as a second sentence, to avoid long sentences that run on about lots of things)
During the inspector's interrogation, Priestley presents Sybil Birling as prejudiced by having her refer to working class women as 'girls of that class'. Perhaps Priestley does this in order to criticise private charities in 1912 ruled by prejudiced wealthy people with no genuine interest in helping the poor.
The success of applying these strategies in the classroom relies on scaffolding and live modelling. To scaffold, when first introducing these tasks, we chose just one or two questions in order to avoid cognitive overload. Once students had mastered 'when' and 'who', we would then move onto 'how'. When live modelling, we regularly apply Andy Tharby's 'I do, we do, you do' strategy to ensure that students are shown, step-by-step, how to construct these sentences. Without scaffolding and modelling, students do not plan the sentences correctly and do not write up the components in the correct order. These steps are therefore vital in ensuring the expanded sentence method is implemented effectively.
This post includes links to writing booklets I have created that contain expanded sentence writing tasks.
The next post will look at 'fragments into sentences'.
Key Takeaways:
Writing paragraphs and essays over and over again is unlikely to lead to improved paragraphs and essays. Practising writing at sentence level and bringing these sentence structures into paragraphs will.
Planning is required, even at sentence level.
Sentence-level tasks can challenge all students if they are content driven and designed to advance thinking.
