The Elusive Sentence

Recovering the Rudiments of Writing

Rita Eulalie Hatfield, Leta Marie Young

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2015
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9798216290698
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Across our nation, many within our educational system complain that America's children cannot write well. Hatfield and Young assert that the problem lies at the foundation of our pedagogy for writing, that most elementary writing curricula lack rudimentary instruction at the sentence level. The authors introduce a sentence-level writing intervention that explicitly defines the elements found in great sentences. This intervention forms the foundational framework for writing skills acquisition, helping teachers, students, and writers of all ages to understand how to craft well-written sentences and paragraphs. Research supports that the most effective instruction is skills-based and multisensory; therefore, Hatfield and Young also introduce a cognitively differentiated writing model, which uses arts-integrated instruction to enhance learning and memory for other content areas. This writing model is based on best practice and this sentence-level intervention serves as a precursor for mastering the new writing standards for CCSS. It offers novice writers a precise blueprint for what successful writing looks like and clearly defines the elusive sentence.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: LANGUAGE OBJECTIVE
• Why should we teach sentence-level writing?
• 1: The Problem
• 2: The Solution
• 3: Sentence-Level Writing Intervention
• 4: Linguistic and Musical Syntax
• How do we teach sentence-level writing?
• 5: Ingham-Webster-Pudewa Method
• 6: Writers
• 7: Sheltered Instruction for Writing
• Part II: CONTENT OBJECTIVE
• What is cognitively differentiated learning?
• 8: Cognitively Differentiated Learning
• Why should we teach academic content through arts-integrated experiences?
• 9: Rationale
• 10: Arts-Integrated Learning
• 11: Arts-Integrated Instruction and Cognition
• Why should we teach academic content through song?
• 12: Song as a Teaching Tool
• 13: Operational Definitions
• 14: Inherited Dissociated Philosophy
• 15: Neuroscience of Music and Memory
• 16: Method and Practice
• 17: Best Practice for Writing Instruction
• 18: Training Teachers for the New Millennium
• 19: Final Reflection
• Appendix A: Arts-Integrated Resources
• Appendix B: Writing Matrix
• Appendix C: Composition Checksheet
• Appendix D: Sample Syllabus
• Appendix E: Webster’s Formulas and Chants for Written Communication
• References