This is an excellent writing exercise, getting students to increase the length of their sentences and beginning to use clauses.
Write a simple sentence on the board. Students copy it.
Ex. The dog ran.
Ask the students questions and the students after each question must rewrite the sentence, answering the question.
Ex. Where? The dog ran ………….
What color of dog? The …….. dog ran to his mother
How? The black dog slowly ran to his mother
How long? The black dog slowly ran to his mother ……
Why? The black dog slowly ran to his mother for 30 minutes because ……
Afterwards, get students to read their creative sentences to the class and to each other. You’ll be amazed at how well they can do this and write.
Here’s an example of sentence stretching on powerpoint – from the Owl of Purdue’s writing lab.
Sentence Stretching,
