Writing with Participial Phrases

Now that my students have a living first draft, it is time to teach them some higher level sentence structure. Tomorrow, we will begin focusing on participial phrases. For seven of my eleven years teaching, my primary role was that of a writing teacher. I am thrilled to be able to move to writing instruction at this time of the year. 

As much as I would like to take credit for everything in this presentation, I have used three resources. I started with a lesson on Writing Fix, then referred to two Image Grammar resources. 

The lesson is scaffolded as follows:

• Students will define participial phrases. 
• Students will deconstruct participial phrases from a mentor text. 
• Students will identify participial phrases within a paragraph. 
• Students will write participial phrases to describe photographs. 
• Students will write participial phrases to describe an event. 
• Students will add participial phrases to a previously written text. 

Because I am teaching students on all different levels, and because a long-term sub in another classroom is also teaching my lessons, I have built a great deal of practice into this assignment. For students who grasp the concept quickly, I will move on to -ed participial phrases. From past experience, I know that the -ings tend to be easier for them. 

Keeping my fingers crossed.