Owl Moon
Jane Yolen
Sentence Fluency
Lesson Focus: Using a variety of strategies to start sentences
Focus Grade Level: First Grade
Time Frame: Several Days
Focus Text/Author: Owl Moon/ Jane Yolen
Other Materials:
· chart paper
· copies of a short passage from Owl Moon-enlarged print
· highlighters
· Construction paper copies of three chosen sentences from Owl Moon
Ohio Academic Content Standards Lesson Focus:
Standard: Writing Processes
K-2 Benchmark:
D. Use revision strategies and resources to improve ideas and content, organization, word
choice and detail.
E. Edit to improve sentence fluency, grammar and usage.
1st Grade Level Indicators:
6. Construct complete sentences with subjects and verbs.
7. Mimic language from literature when appropriate.
9. Reread own writing for clarity.
10. Add descriptive words and details.
Book Summary:
In this story a father and his daughter go searching for the great horned owl together on a moon-lit winter night. The little girl ends up discovering how a winter night feels and how much you can learn from watching and listening in the night. At the end of the story, they finally find the owl they were searching for.
About the Author:
Jane Yolen is an author of children’s books, fantasy, and science fiction books. She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature. She has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America and the Aesop of the twentieth century.
Before the Lesson:
This should be a familiar read of Owl Moon. Students should already have had the chance to discuss the literary elements of the story. Now, students should be focused on Jane Yolen and how she wrote the story to convey a clear message using clear sentence fluency.
Things to Remember:
This lesson requires students to read passages. This needs to be done when your students have a good foundation of word knowledge and problem solving strategies. This book should be familiar to help with this skill but it should not be a book that they have to learn how to read. You want to make sure they can read the passages with ease if you are going to have your students examine the writing in the story. If they are unable, create an overhead of the passages and read it as a class and do a whole group lesson rather than peer work.
Lesson Steps:
Day one
1. First, read Owl Moon to the students.
2. Discuss that author Jane Yolen shows off what she does best. Jane writes beautiful descriptions that sound so rhythmic. While it might be hard to pinpoint exactly for your students what makes it flow so well, help guide the discussion. Jane, for example, varies back and forth between longer sentences and shorter sentence. She also, for the most part, begins her sentences with different words.
3. Have several students hold up on construction paper three different sentences from the story you have chosen that vary in length and different beginnings. Have students discuss and identify the differences between the sentences.
4. In partners, have students look at a small passage from the story. Have them highlight the beginnings and discuss the different words Jane used. You will want to group students heterogeneously so that students can help read the story part to each other. I always choose a smaller section with less challenging words. The very first page is a good page to start the activity.
5. As a class, create an anchor chart to discuss how Yolen made her story flow. Identify how she made short sentences and long sentences and started with different words. Write down examples on the chart for future reference. (i.e. she used a person sometimes, then action words, then describing words, etc.)
6. As a class, write a shared writing about a day at the swimming pool. Encourage students to think about different beginnings for each sentence while writing it.
7. After the story is finished, have several students come up and circle the beginning words of the sentences. Did they begin the same? If so, how could we change them? Do our sentences have different lengths? If not, could we change them around to make them shorter or longer?
8. Fix any changes that you discuss as a class together. Discuss how your story sounds better with the changes and more like how Jane wrote her story.
Day Two
1. Remind students how Jane used different sentence structures and varieties to help her story flow better.
2. Write two examples on the board of the same story.
a. We went to the beach. It was sunny. It was warm. We had fun. We flew kites. We ate snacks.
b. We spent a warm, sunny day at the beach. When we got hungry we had a snack. Later on, we flew kites high in the sky. It was a great day!
3. Tell students that one way to make writing interesting is to write sentences that sound different from each other. We can do this by beginning our sentences differently and making some sentences long and others short.
4. Read story #1 aloud. Ask the students how the writer did with writing some long and some short sentences. What does the writer need to increase? (long sentences). Reread the story and underline the first word of each sentence. Did the writer do a good job of beginning the sentences different each time?
5. Now do the same thing with story #2. Help the students to see that the writer of story #2 does a better job of writing interesting sentences.
6. Discuss how story number 2 was similar to Jane’s writing in Owl moon.
7. Tell students to go back to their seats and write a description about the moon. Remind students to start sentences differently, use different kinds of words to describe the moon and night and make long and short sentences.
8. Have students share their stories with peers. Tell the students to circle the words at the beginning of the sentences to show the different beginnings and different lengths.
9. Encourage students to change any sentences that start differently as peers give advice in their partnerships. This could be a class problem and if it is the case, I would go over different words that they can use to start their sentences in a whole group setting.
10. Always give students time to change or correct anything they would like.
11. Post an excellent model of their writing in the classroom for sentence fluency. Encourage other examples to be shared during author’s chair of writing.
12. Practice this concept throughout all of your students’ writing. Practice is the key to consistent use for students.
Additional Resources:
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