Sentence Frames

When teaching your students a new skill you must also teach the student necessary vocabulary. This must be presented in a formal vocabulary mini lesson. For example if the lesson is about identifying polygons first think of necessary words to support this skill. Vertex, side, angle, square, triangle, etc. These words can be put on sentence strips and introduced whole class one by one. Each word needs to be explained. Allow the students to find examples within the class and talk with their neighbor. Now, this is the new and exciting part... you create "sentence frames". For example, "The ________ is a _______." The green block is a triangle. More advanced students can use a more advanced "sentence frame". For example, "The ___________ is a ________ because ________ and ________." The green block is a triangle because it has three straight sides and three vertexes. You can supply both the basic and advanced sentence frames to all of your students. The theory is that the students will use the highest level they feel comfortable. Also, students who speak English as a first language do not speak academic English as a first language. Finally, always encourage the use of complete sentences.