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Cut the Deck, targeted for 8th or 9th graders, teaches seven major
writing assignments covering all the major modes of writing. Sentence
manipulatory skills – combining, rearranging, subtracting, and
expanding – are featured throughout the text. Students enjoy the humor
of the sentence writing skills activities and the progress that they
see they are making. The ideas are functional and practical. Four labor
saving devices make teaching the writing process manageable.
Bob Cahill and Herb Hrebic, the developers of the Stack the Deck writing system, co-authored Cut the Deck.
Key Features:
- Sentence manipulatory skills – combining, rearranging,
subtracting and expanding – are taught as a writing vocabulary and
reinforced throughout the text.
- Writing across the curriculum topics are included with each prompt.
- Student models are included for each assignment.
- Students write a how to do paper, personal narrative,
observation, enumeration, order of importance, comparison-contrast and
mood.
- Point of view is emphasized. Students practice writing compositions in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person point of view.
- Think sheets, designed for each organizational pattern, help students brainstorm and stay focused.
- The Sentence Opening Sheet, our most lauded teacher labor savings
device, helps students identify and correct dull sentence openings,
fragments, verb tense inconsistency, weak verbs, teacher pet peeve
words – gots, a lot, stuff, you know, run-ons, etc.
- Supplemental exercises concentrate on fragments, run-ons, subject-verb agreement, dangling modifiers, tense inconsistency.
- Checklist sheets help with peer evaluation – cooperative learning.
- Literary analysis assignments are included for “Thank You, M’am,”
A Raisin in the Sun, and Flowers for Algernon – all popular works of
literature.
Scope and Sequence
Oral Language:
Sentence sense
Never heard before sentences
Double, triple meanings
Language flexibility
Many uses of a word
Creating new words
Word stretches – idioms
Developing your own ideas
Reading aloud – all stages of the writing process
Sentence Combining – Sentence Fluency:
Combining kernel ideas
Rearranging kernel ideas
Varying sentence openings
Subtracting unnecessary words
Expanding with specific details
Combining with glue words and WH words
Combining with ING words
Subordinating lesser ideas
Coordinating equal ideas
Fragments and run-ons
The Writing Process:
How to – expository (you)
Personal narrative (I)
Personal observation (He, she, it)
Enumeration – expository
Persuasion – opinion
Comparing/contrasting – expository
Mood – description/exposition
**Thank you, M’am” and “The Ransom of Red Chief”
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