Sentence Expansion Activities!

 Agnes B. Elementary - Lesson 5! 

    When we first started our lesson, one of our students was missing as she was coming in late from a dentist appointment. For the first half of our lesson, we only had one child. This affected and changed our lesson a lot, but we had to be adaptable. We first started the lesson as we had planned with a little icebreaker. This was a small monster related activity connected to our first book. One person started off the sequence by making a monster movement of some sort (growl, claws, roar, etc). The next person had to repeat the first movement, adding their own afterwards. We went in a circle till everyone had a movement included and then did one with all of us together. We did this twice. Afterwards, we went over our vocabulary with our student. We had him clap out syllables and follow along with us via a slideshow and vocab cards.

Vocabulary Words: 

Letdown
Scared
Wobbly
Personal

    After reviewing vocabulary, we started off with reading our first book for the day, The Problem with Not Being Scared of Kids. This was a picture book about monsters who were trying to make friends with the humans but ran into some challenges doing so. My co-teacher read this reading and had sticky notes with questions to ask to promote dialogic reading with our student. He seemed to very much enjoy the book. Our reading went a lot quicker than it usually does as he is a quieter kid. Usually, the second student we have will have lots of input and questions to ask as she is more outgoing. At this point, we had started getting nervous about time, as we were flying through. 

Some Questions Asked During Reading:

What do you think is the problem with not being scared of kids for a monster? 
Would you have a sleepover with a monster like that, or would you react the same way? 
Remind me again what personal means? Why would a holiday be personal for the monsters in this case? 
What are they reading? What do you think the monsters are trying to do? 
Do you think the monster is just trying to have fun with the kids or scare them based on what we have seen so far? 
How do you think the monsters feel because they don't “fit in” 
How do you think the kids should react towards them? Should they give them a chance?
What gesture did the kid do to the monsters?

    



   We went right into the next part of the lesson that we had planned, which was his first sentence expansion activity. We had an anchor chart provided on how to properly expand a sentence, as well as an interactive anchor chart where we filled in our answers together. The student was given a sentence starter of some sort (EX. The monsters...) and was asked to expand off of it using what we learned in the book. We went through the starters one by one, completing them together. I wrote the answers on the anchor chart and lead the activity while my co-teacher supported him on-on-one with writing. We went through very quickly, and we were now extremely nervous as to what we were going to do. 

    


We remained calm and levelheaded for the student while trying to figure out what to do. At this point we had planned for him to do a movement break, so my co-teacher took lead for this activity while I quickly came up with an activity on the fly. I used the whiteboards students had on their desks, and I wrote our vocabulary words/their definitions in no particular way and had him match the definition to its vocabulary word. I figured this was a good way for us to fill up some time while still having a meaningful activity. We then went over each definition to see if we could come up with a way to make them more student friendly. He loved getting to use the whiteboards. 



    After, it was time for us to read our second book. I knew we were still pretty ahead of time and had to think fast, so I came up with another meaningful activity on the spot. While we read our second book, we had the student identify vocabulary words we could use based off the book, then researched together what the word meant and wrote a student friendly definition for this word. The second book we read was called Little One Step about a little duckling who is trying to make it home to his mom but is tired of walking, so his brothers encourage him to keep going by telling him to just take one step. The vocabulary activity not only helped us take up time, but it also kept him more engaged with the reading and gave him the opportunity to learn how to research and digest information we did not previously know. I felt as though it was a smart decision for our lesson. 

Some Questions Asked During Reading: 

What do you think is the problem with not being scared of kids for a monster? 
Would you have a sleepover with a monster like that, or would you react the same way? 
Remind me again what personal means? Why would a holiday be personal for the monsters in this case? 
What are they reading? What do you think the monsters are trying to do? 
Do you think the monster is just trying to have fun with the kids or scare them based on what we have seen so far? 
How do you think the monsters feel because they don't “fit in” 
How do you think the kids should react towards them? Should they give them a chance?
What gesture did the kid do to the monsters?

    We then moved onto the next activity we had planned which was a comparison activity. Since both books showcased examples of one of our vocabulary words, Perseverance, we had him do a chart in his journal that showed examples of perseverance in both stories. We did all of the examples together on an interactive anchor chart. Similar to the last activity, I lead the interactive anchor chart and directions while my co-teacher provided him one-on-one writing support. We encouraged him to look back at the books to find specific examples we could talk about. He did a really good job navigating this activity and had a lot of great examples to share with us. 

    It was at this point that our second student had come in. Not sure what to do, we decided to have my co-teacher take our first student on another movement break while I quickly read our second student the books we read that day. I did not expect her to go back and make-up work as we did not have time, but I did want her to have an understanding of the readings as this was going to be helpful for her for the next part of this activity. 




    

    We then had them do the next part of our planned lesson which was another sentence expansion activity. For this activity, the students were given different sentence starters/details and were first asked to match the sentence starter with its correct detail based off the book. The students worked in partners for this activity. Afterwards, we had the students check their sentences and write them in their journals. 





     

    At this point, we had done better on time but were still about 15-20 minutes ahead of time. Thinking quickly, I was able to come up with another meaningful activity we could do to fill time before our closer. I had the students go into their journals and write about a time that they themselves showed perseverance, and how they overcame it. I thought this was not only a nice little reflection activity that related back to one of our themes today, but it was another writing activity for the students to do. Me and my co-teacher each took a student and worked with them for one-on-one support. This activity took up just enough time and moved us nicely into our closer. 


    Finally, we wrapped up what seemed like a never-ending lesson with a small closing activity. We had a different one planned, but our students really seem to like to play the game statues, so we just allowed them to play statues with us. Our original activity was an affirmations march, so it was not like they were missing anything important by changing the activity. We played statues for the ending and then had the students sit back down and take three deep breaths, as they had been very hyper since the second student came in and we did not want to return them to their teacher fired up. We let them know that we have one more lesson with them, which is next week and then we are all done. We clued them into what next week's final lesson is about, which is Ladybugs. The students were very upset to hear that next week was our last week, and one even insisted that they get us a gift. We told her that won't be necessary, but we are also sad to be leaving them! We gave hugs and high-fives and then that was the end of our lesson for the day. 

The SLO's for this activity were: 

Tier 1

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to develop complete sentences with differentiated core support by completing the Sentence Expansion activity and perseverance writing independently or with a peer with 95% accuracy. 

Tier 2

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to develop complete sentences with targeted support by completing a Sentence Expansion activity and perseverance writing with personalized one-on-one support from the teacher with 85-90% accuracy. 

Tier 3

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to develop complete sentences with intensive support by completing the Sentence Expansion activity and perseverance writing with a concentrated one-on-one support from the teacher with 80% accuracy.

    The objectives for this activity were met. This can be seen through our students sentence expansion in his journal that he completed with personalized one-on-one support from the teacher with 85-90% accuracy. We were unable to see if the objective was met for the other student as she was absent, but it can be assumed that she would have also met objective as she usually has minimal issues with our assessments. 

From this experience, I learned just how essential flexibility is to effective teaching. Even with a carefully structured plan, the entire dynamic of the lesson shifted simply because one student was absent for half the session. This forced me to think on my feet and make decisions that maintained the integrity of the lesson without overwhelming the student who was present. I learned that improvising does not have to feel chaotic. When I stay calm and focused, I can create activities that still connect to the objectives and build meaningful skills. I also realized how much pacing depends on students themselves. Our quieter student worked quickly and didn’t initiate as much discussion, which made our timing move faster than expected. This helped me see the importance of preparing varied engagement strategies so I can maintain a productive pace regardless of who is present. Ultimately, I learned that teaching is just as much about responding to the moment as it is about preparing ahead of time, and that adaptability is a skill I need, and am actively strengthening.

    This experience will influence my professional identity by shaping the kind of teacher I want to become: one who stays steady, student-centered, and solution-oriented even when things shift unexpectedly. I felt myself stepping into a more confident teacher role as I took initiative to adjust the lesson, create new activities, and support each student based on what they needed in that moment. It made me realize that I am capable of handling real classroom unpredictability and that I can make decisions quickly without losing sight of instructional goals. It also reminded me how important it is to be attuned to students' emotional and behavioral states. When the second student came in full of energy, I recognized that a calm closing routine was necessary before sending them back to their teacher. Experiences like this help me see that teaching is not about perfection; it’s about responsiveness, intentionality, and building relationships. Moving forward, I will carry this mindset with me and continue growing into a teacher who sees challenges as opportunities to demonstrate care, creativity, and professionalism.

    This experience will strongly shape how I plan and deliver lessons in the future. I now understand the value of having flexible, meaningful “backup” activities that align with the objectives but can be inserted at any point to adjust pacing. I will start intentionally preparing small extension tasks, like vocabulary matching, student-friendly definition writing, and personal reflections, that can stretch or shrink depending on timing. I also learned to plan more for differences in student talk time and participation levels, since student personality can drastically influence pacing. Instructionally, I will keep using interactive anchor charts and one-on-one writing support, as these clearly helped students meet their writing objectives. For assessment, I now see the importance of documenting progress even when circumstances shift, like when a student arrives late or when partners change unexpectedly. In the future, I will build assessments that are flexible enough to be completed in different ways but still aligned to the same learning targets. Overall, this experience pushed me to think more intentionally about pacing, student engagement, and contingency planning, and it will absolutely influence the way I design lessons moving forward.

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