Any English teachers or anyone else? Sentences. Lack of.

[TeenTimesTwo]

Has anyone got any creative ideas to get DD (finishing y8) to write in sentences? Specifically for PEEL stuff?

Is there anything other than endless repetition of practicing:

• Say your point. FULL STOP.
• For example / we know this because …. FULL STOP.
• This shows …. FULL STOP.

Just seen recent History test (others not back yet). 10 lines covering causes of the industrial revolution and only one full stop at the end!

Especially anything that can be done in say 15min slots throughout the summer?

Getting desperate.

Does she actually know what a sentence is - (subject and verb) - that is, does she know where to put the full stops? So if you took a written passage and took out all the full stops and capitals at the beginning of sentences, would she know where the full stops should go? I'm wondering if she's avoiding doing it because she doesn't really know. Alternatively, is it just that she is in too much of a hurry and can't be bothered?

I advise my students to read their sentences aloud, with only a very short pause for commas. A proper breath comes at the end. Then ask what she has just read to highlight that sentences help us to understand what we are reading. Ask her to rewrite it with shorter sentences and read it aloud again to highlight the improvement.

I'm pretty confident she knows what a sentence is.
Reading aloud does work a bit (shame she can't do that in tests!), she does correctly put in the breaks when doing this, but can't consistently recognise when she has put a break in, in order to punctuate.

I don't think it is 'can't be bothered', I think there is an element of not being able to hold thoughts in a structured way for very long, and I suspect she forgets quite how long ago she started the sentence and what she was talking about.

I guess encouraging her to use extra time in tests (and other work in general) to always read answer back and put in the stops. Though that doesn't work with paragraphs as if they're not there they're not there. Though using // might still be an improvement? I suspect in class she always feel pushed for time, so she probably gets used to not checking iyswim?

Still hoping for a magic wand

Reading for pleasure can help e.g. novels, non-fiction. In this way the idea of sentences can be 'absorbed'.

This is not true of a more modern 'internet blog' or 'social media post' style of writing though, where sometimes sentences ramble, spelling is random and anything goes!

If reading aloud helps a bit can she practise over the summer reading in her head and holding her breath? When she needs to breathe she needs to find a place to put a break. It isn't perfect as obviously usually you need sentences of varying length and with the division in a meaningful place, but it is a start.

In terms of structuring, encouraging her to practise essay planning (or even paragraph planning) could really help. Spending a few minutes at the beginning jotting down her ideas so she isn't rushing to write the sentences might help too.

I was taught to read it aloud (you can whisper it/mutter it in a test? ) and if you needed to take a breath put in a full stop. Don't know if that will help her?

I had a student who did the exact same thing.
In the end, we sat down together and wrote out a page of A4 text, and then highlighted all capital letters and punctuation. He stuck it in the front of his book and then would compare his work with it, looking to see if he had enough punctuation.
He could then go through his work in stages and had a guide of what "too long" looked like. The highlighter helped him to visually see where his punctuation was. It really helped him, might be worth a shot?

Thank you all. Some good ideas there we haven't yet tried.

Has she tried using mind maps? They generate ideas, so a few words can trigger further ideas. If she has trouble holding on to ideas, that might help, then each point can be expanded upon in greater detail ( and proper sentences hopefully).

We have modelled them at home, but I am yet to see here independently use one. She might feel its 'not allowed' when presented with lined paper for a test.
I should check that.

Backwards. Get her to start at the end, with a full stop and then read a line at a time until she finds the logical start of the sentence. Then repeat.

She needs to see the parts and not just the whole.