Getting Started with High 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

 

• 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.

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.