In Mechanically Inclined, Jeff Anderson teaches sentence stalking, a way to use mentor texts of any length to draw students' attention to an author's craft, the goal being to highlight what is done well rather than to take kids on an error hunt.
What concepts can we teach from the following sentence?
"Then I looked straight at Daddy and said, ‘Can I please be excused now?’ and the words I used might not have been angry, but it was in my voice and flashing out of my eyes” (Ida B 116).
Speak Ida's words out loud. What is the expression on her face? What is the tone in her voice?
Talk about the use of Daddy as a proper noun. When should "daddy" be capitalized? When shouldn't it be?
Notice how to punctuate a question in quotation marks.
Look at the pronoun "it" and talk about what "it" is.
What other concepts do you see?
"Then I looked straight at Daddy and said, ‘Can I please be excused now?’ and the words I used might not have been angry, but it was in my voice and flashing out of my eyes” (Ida B 116).
Speak Ida's words out loud. What is the expression on her face? What is the tone in her voice?
Talk about the use of Daddy as a proper noun. When should "daddy" be capitalized? When shouldn't it be?
Notice how to punctuate a question in quotation marks.
Look at the pronoun "it" and talk about what "it" is.
What other concepts do you see?
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