Discipline: Professional Resources

Grade(s): 9 - 12

Imprint: Heinemann

Author(s): Donald Killgallon, Jenny Killgallon

“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 High School Sentence Composing introduces the powerful sentence-composing approach. Using real sentences by authors as models, it provides practice with five sentence parts, or tools, that research shows skilled writers use to create high-quality, variety-packed writing: 

  • Extenders to enlarge meaning within a sentence
  • Identifiers to identify someone or something
  • Describers to describe someone or something
  • Elaborators to add details for full understanding
  • Combos to combine tools within a sentence

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

  • Basic sentence ideas—Activities to understand subjects, predicates, and their relationship to those five tools
  • Broken sentences—Exercises to identify, avoid, and repair fragments
  • Vocabulary scaffolds—“Quickshots” to include an immediate, clear definition in context for challenging words.