Keynote Beverly Ann Chin

Arizona English Teachers Association Conference
Saturday October 6, 2007
Keynote: Beverly Ann Chin
“Sentence Combining: The Bridge Between Written Sentence Fluency and Improving Reading”

Chin demonstrates how we tell students to draft by just getting ideas down on the page, even if it sounds like you speak. But we know that speaking is not coherent, it’s in fragments and run-ons. Chin demonstrated how doing oral sentence combing (working from lists of super-short sentences) that helps demonstrate a variety of sentences, style, tone, etc.

I really like how this idea of doing both sentence combining and oral rehearsal demonstrates to students:
1.the there are a variety of ways that a sentence can be structured to say the same thing, and
2.that individuals have preferences in style and tone.

Chin shared an example of an sentence combining activity based on literature. She broke the sentences of a paragraph down into short sentences and then had students recombine the information into different versions and realize how different styles emerge from the same information. 

October 06 2007 | Posted in AETA