What can teachers do to help students develop stronger vocabulary knowledge?
Page 7: Compose Possible Sentences
The next step in implementing Possible Sentences is to ask students to compose sentences using at least two vocabulary words in each. These sentences should attempt to predict how the author might use the words in the text. Doing so will stimulate students’ thinking about the content and support their comprehension when they read the text. At first, teachers will need to model how to compose an appropriate sentence. Later, students can work with a partner or in small groups to write their own.
Students are not required to write enough sentences to use all of the words in the list on their own. Rather, they are usually directed to write 2–4 sentences that contain the words that they feel comfortable using. Although each student, pair, or small group will not use every word in the list, the intent is that all of the words will be used when the sentences are shared as a class. In order to make certain that all of the words get used, the teacher might have to supply a few of sentences of her own. For this reason, she may find it helpful to develop some sentences in advance.
After allowing time for each pair or small group of students to compose their sentences, the teacher should reconvene the class and ask students to select sentences to share out loud. As students read their sentences, the teacher can write them on the board. As more words from the list are used, students may need to adjust the sentences that they had originally selected to share to be sure that each vocabulary word appears at least once. The teacher continues to request sentences from the students until each word in the list has been used at least one time. At this stage, the teacher does yet not evaluate the accuracy of each sentence with respect to what students will be reading. For now, the teacher is only concerned about whether the use of the words in the sentences makes sense. In the videos below, the teacher demonstrates how to develop possible sentences and then students share some of their own.
Videos courtesy of Voyager Sopris Learning, Inc.
Transcript: Developing Possible Sentences
Teacher: So, what I’m going to do now is…moving into our Possible Sentence strategy that we used yesterday…first thing I want to do is look at our list of words. And the purpose, remember, here is to try and find minimum of two words in a possible sentence that we might find in the text. So I know that we’re studying about the 17 and the 1800s, okay? I know that we have been talking about people working. People used to come here, and, you know, as adults and work as indentured servants. And so when I’m thinking about that, I’m thinking about perhaps teens and employment. So my first possible sentence could be “In the 17 and 1800s…” Let me walk over here and get closer to look at these words. “In the 17 and 1800s, teens were not compensated” or “there was no compensation for their employment.” Something like that might work. Well, teens often worked without compensation for employment. So let me write that out so I can kind of see what this is looking like.
So in the 1700s and 1800s—what did I say?—teens often worked without compensation. I need to finish that. In the 1700s and 1800s teens often worked without compensation for their work. So the word would be “employment.” Okay, so we got one…actually three words in that possible sentence. So my thinking around this is, this might be something that I’m going to see in a text we’re about to read. Okay, let me come up with one more sentence. Talking about teens and their work kind of makes me wonder about their education, okay, during the day. What kind of…if work was so important, you know, maybe they just needed to spend a lot of time on skills and trade during the day so that they could prepare for this. So I’m thinking of education and…let’s see here. So writing is…trade or skills. Okay, here we go. Learning a trade or skill during the school day was an important…so I’m going to use “crucial”…was a crucial part. Now, you’ll notice that I am making an effort to make these into complete sentences, okay? A crucial part of teen education during 1700s and 1800s. Okay, so let’s go back through: “crucial,” “education.” So did I satisfy the requirements of the Possible Sentence strategy? Yeah, I used at least two of the words from our list here.
Transcript: Sharing Possible Sentences
Teacher: Okay, and before I actually move onto the next group, I want to make sure that we’re using all the words so we’ve got them covered. “Teen.” You guys help me out here. “Employment.”
Students: “Crucial,” “education,” and “activities.”
Teacher: Okay, all right. So here are the next five that we are looking for. All right, so this group right here, partner two…
Student: In the 1700 and 1800s, they had an agricultural society, not an urban society.
Teacher: They had a…
Student: Agricultural society.
Teacher: A or an?
Class: An.
Teacher: Not an urban one right? Okay, so your two words were?
Student: “Agricultural” and “society.”
Student: We also had “urban.”
Teacher: You actually also had “urban” in there. Okay, so does that meet the criteria? At least two words? And, let’s see, does it make sense? In the 1700 and 1800s, they had an agricultural society, not an urban one. I think I need a comma in there.
Student: Agricultural society. Okay, yeah. So we’ve got “agricultural.” Anything else that we didn’t? “Society” and “urban.”
Teacher: Good job. Okay, partner two.
Student: Working as an apprentice was fundamental for starting a career in the 1700s and 1800s, as well as today.
Teacher: Was fundamental.
Student: For starting a career in the 1700 and 1800s, as well as today.
Teacher: And your words were?
Student: “Apprentice” and “fundamental.”
Teacher: Okay, and does that sentence make sense? Was fundamental for starting a career in the 1700 and 1800s as well as today. Okay, good. All right, “apprentice” and “fundamental.” Excellent. So we have created possible sentences with each of these vocabulary words.
It can be challenging for students to generate sentences with words that are new to them. However, Possible Sentences offers some built-in supports:
- Because the list contains both familiar and unfamiliar words, students can use their existing knowledge of familiar words to support their use of the new, unfamiliar ones.
- When partnering or using small groups, each student or pair does not have to use all the words or come up with all the sentences independently. However, because all of the words will be used when partners or groups share their sentences with the class, the students’ vocabulary knowledge is expanded further.
- Although students are directed to write 2–4 sentences, higher-achieving students can compose more sentences and lower-achieving students can compose fewer sentences. Note: Regardless of how many sentences the students are writing, each one must contain at least two terms from the list.
For Your Information
Students may try to load their sentences with as many vocabulary words as they can. Although this can be a fun activity, such sentences usually end up being hard to comprehend and not predictive of how the words will be used in the text, which is contrary to the purpose of the activity.
Listen as Deborah Reed discusses when to implement Possible Sentences during the course of a unit. (time: 0:59).
Deborah K. Reed, PhD
College of Education, University of Iowa
Director, Iowa Reading Research Center
Transcript: Deborah Reed, PhD
When implementing Possible Sentences, students need to have enough information that they can start anticipating the ways in which authors will use the words to present additional information. It would be a little bit more difficult to start using Possible Sentences at the beginning of the unit or the novel before they have that sufficient background knowledge of the information itself, or the concept itself, and the ways that the author is communicating new information as you move through chapter by chapter or segment by segment within the text. So having existing background knowledge can be one of the supports that makes Possible Sentences more successful. And, again, that would mean that you’re implementing it a little ways into that unit or chapter or novel and not right away at the beginning.
Below are examples of student-generated Possible Sentences for the list of words from Ms. Yun’s social studies class.
Many civilians joined militias to fight in the Civil War.
People disagreed about whether slavery should be unconstitutional.
Lincoln had to come up with a strategy to defeat Southern militias.
Agricultural communities wanted to abolish slavery.
Young men who became soldiers left their industrial jobs in the cities.
States that want to become independent countries have to fight to secede.
English/Language Arts Example
Below are examples of student-generated sentences for the list of words from White Fang.
The convict was the most incorrigible man the judge had ever encountered.
The convict’s wrath over his harsh sentence made him an incorrigible prisoner.
When protecting his master, White Fang could be characterized as ferocious.
To live with the Scotts, White Fang was compelled to be infinitely more timid than he was in the wild.
The convict felt persecuted by the judge and threatened vainly that he would get revenge.
White Fang pursued his timid prey.
