Tap the Deck

Order 25 or more student books and receive a FREE teacher's manual!

Written by Larry Lewin and Tanis Knight, Tap the Deck integrates sentence combining techniques into process-oriented writing assignments. Besides oral language and sentence combining units, young writers practice ten major writing assignments. Scoring rubrics in the teacher’s manual are provided for each prompt.

Key Features:

1. Young writers narrate about a remembered place from the past, describe a favorite animal, solve a problem, argue an opinion, narrate a chase scene, explain a situation, write a letter to a 2nd grader, describe creatively from the point of view of shoes, narrate about a peevish problem, and report on an invention.
2. Oral language activities enable students to unscramble sentences, play with a language machine, create new names (sniglets), coin verbs, discuss unusual meanings of words, and discuss idioms.
3. Sentence manipulatory skills – combining, rearranging, and expanding – are taught as a writer’s vocabulary to help with sentence fluency and are reinforced in the writing process.
4. Specific units on identifying and correcting FRAGMENTS and RUN-ONS aid students in eliminating these common errors.
5. Special publishing activities are provided for each assignment – displaying on a bulletin board, drawing an illustration, reading aloud, or creating a class booklet for open house.
6. The invention report teaches students how to write a report without plagiarizing.

Scope and Sequence

Oral Language:
Sentence sense
The language machine
New names – sniglets
Coining new verbs
Flexible words
Unusual meanings – idioms
Reading aloud – all stages of the writing process

Sentence Combining – Sentence Fluency:
Journalistic questions – expanding
Rearranging
Supporting ideas by expanding
The Big Challenge – expanding
Supporting ideas – details
Combining with and, but, and or
Combining with verbs
Combining with colorful words
Combining with glue words, locators words, and ING words
Fragments and run-ons

The Writing Process:
Narrating a memory of a remembered place
Describing an animal
Problem-solving – persuasion
Observing – narration
Explaining – choices
Describing creatively
Persuading – opinion paper
Writing about yourself
Narrating a pet peeve
Report writing - inventions 

You may also be interested in this/these product(s):

Tap the Deck - Manual $10.00 Add to Cart