Getting Started with Middle School Sentence Composing: A Student Worktext

"Sentence composing provides acrobatic training in sentence dexterity... using literature as a writing school with a faculty of professional writers who virtually teach students to build better sentences." - Don and Jenny Killgallon

Getting Started with Middle School Sentence Composing introduces the powerful Sentence-Composing approach at a perfect time - middle school - to deepen students' skill in writing strong sentences. Using real sentences by authors as models, it provides practice with four tools that skilled writers use to add variety to their work:

• Openers to vary sentence beginnings
• Splits to vary sentence middles
• Closers to vary sentence endings
• Mixes to add details in two or three places.

Along the way, Don and Jenny Killgallon provide support for students, including:

• Basic sentence structures - activities to understand subjects, predicates, and their roles in sentence building
• Broken sentences - exercises to identify, avoid, and repair fragments
• Vocabulary scaffolds - "quickshots" to include an immediate, clear definition in context for challenging words

The free, online teacher's booklet is packed with information about Sentence-Composing and its relationship to grammar, an instructional framework, and connections to state and national standards.

Don Killgallon is the originator of the sentence-composing approach and author of numerous sentence-composing worktexts. He is the author or coauthor of Paragraphs for Middle School (2013), Paragraphs for High School (2012), Grammar for College Writing (2010), Story Grammar for Elementary School (2008), Grammar for High School (2007), Grammar for Middle School (2006), Sentence Composing for Elementary School (2000), Sentence Composing for High School (1998), Sentence Composing for College (1998), Sentence Composing for Middle School (1997), and Daily Sentence Composing (Great Source). He currently co-teaches with Jenny Killgallon in the Odyssey Program of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.

Jenny Killgallon is coauthor of Paragraphs for Middle School (2013), Paragraphs for High School (2012), Grammar for College Writing (2010), Story Grammar for Elementary School (2008), Grammar for High School (2007), Grammar for Middle School (2006), Sentence Composing for Elementary School (2000), and Daily Sentence Composing (Great Source). She currently co-teaches with Don Killgallon in the Odyssey Program of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.