Modelo Económico de Rostow

Mr. Jones is working with his middle school students on developing writing skills. One such skill involves learning to combine short, simple sentences into longer, more complex sentences. His students have been working through a series of sentence- combining activities for several weeks. He decides to use one of the Write On! lessons as a culminating activity, giving his students a chance to use what they know about combining sentences to edit or revise.

He starts by instructing his students to download the lesson excerpt (below) he has placed in NEO Share.

When we first write down our thoughts, we often use short, choppy sentences and there may not be enough thought in one sentence to make it interesting. We can sometimes go back and combine sentences. For example: Short Sentences

The cow ambled slowly. She was headed for the barn. It was milking time. Combined

The cow ambled slowly toward the barn at milking time.

Combine the short, choppy sentences below into one more interesting sentence. Here are some words that might help you combine sentences:

and, but, while, where, when, because, for, which, after, although, as, since, who, that, if 1. The sun is scorching! Sweat is pouring off my brow.

2. You can have the rest of the peanut butter. I’m not hungry.

3. Our first president was George Washington. He turned down the offer to become our first king. Kings are found in aristocracies. He believed in democracy.

Mr. Jones introduces what they will be doing by going over the introduction and first example with the students. Then he gives his students the chance to work through the three exercises on their own and in small groups. Once they send their sentences to him via NEO Share, he projects a few of them to discuss with the whole class, showing all of the different ways the same sentences could be combined.

The next day, Mr. Jones continues with more activities found in the middle school Write On! writing lessons. These lessons involve short reading passages that include a moral. Students engage with the material by talking about what they think the moral of the story is, as well as getting further practice in editing and revising. Here is an excerpt from the lesson he uses.

Access this activity at:

Write On! LessonsMiddle School

Writing Lessons, Writing Skills

You who have brothers and sisters know that people don’t always want the same things. Don’t you feel sorry for the grownups in your life who try to please all of you? This fable is about just such a family predicament.

The Father and His Two Daughters A man who had two daughters gave one in marriage to a gardener and the other to a potter. After the weddings, the daughters departed with their husbands to their new homes, and the father was left alone.

The following spring the father went to visit the daughter who married the gardener. “How fares it with you, daughter?” he asked.

“Very well, indeed,” she replied. “We have everything we want. I have only one wish. And that is that we have a heavy shower to water all our growing plants.”

Later the father visited the daughter who had married the potter. “And how is everything with you, daughter?”

“There is not a thing we lack,” said she. “My only hope is that this fine weather and hot sun may continue so that all our tiles may be baked.”

“Alas,” said the father, “if you must have fine weather and your sister must have rain, which am I to pray for?”

The End

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Talk about the fable with your writing partners. How would you tell -- in your own words -- what the moral is?

Suppose you began it this way: “You can’t always . . .” How would you finish it? Let each writing partner try.

You can’t always < >. You can’t always < >. You can’t always < >. You can’t always < >.

Name and save this file now. (Press ctrl+S, type a name for the file, and press enter.) ====================

Access this activity at:

Write On! LessonsMiddle School

Writing LessonsWriting Skills

Sentence Combining with a Moral

After students are done reading the passage, discussing the moral, and completing the activity with a writing partner, they have the chance to apply what they’ve learned about sentence combining. Mr. Jones has his students continue with the lesson below.

You’ve been using the words who, that, and which in your speech since you were little. But did you know how useful they are when you write sentences? You can combine two related sentences using who, that, or which.

For example: Fables are stories. Fables teach a lesson. Might become:

Fables are stories that teach a lesson. Here’s another example:

Aesop was a slave in ancient Greece. Aesop told stories.

The stories taught a lesson. That might become:

Aesop, who was a slave in ancient Greece, told stories that taught a lesson. Or:

Aesop, who told stories that taught a lesson, was a slave in ancient Greece.

If you wanted to stress telling the stories, you might want to use the first combination. If you wanted to stress his being a slave, you might choose the second. Do you see why? Talk it over with your writing partners.

====================

Then, the lesson relates what students have learned about sentence combining to the original fable about the father and his two daughters. Students first look at sentences from the story, then practice combining them, and finally make deductions about which words they can use to replace certain types of information.

Now, try using who, that, and, or which to combine sentences from the story. Look for the hints in brackets.

Sentences from the story A man had two daughters. [who]

He gave one in marriage to a gardener. [and] He gave the other in marriage to a potter. Combined sentence:

< >

==================== Sentences from the story He visited one daughter. She had married the potter. Combined sentence:

< >

==================== Sentences from the story

The second daughter wanted hot weather. [who] She wanted [dry] weather.

She wanted the sun to bake her tiles. [because] She was the opposite of her sister.

Her sister wanted wet weather. [who] Combined sentence:

< >

====================

Maybe you noticed something. Who can replace words like these: the man

the daughter the husband she

Add another to this list: < >

Which and that can replace words like these: the garden

the weather the tiles the stories

Add another to this list: < >

Now you might be able to finish these rules: Who replaces < > words.

Which and that replace < > words.

Mr. Jones works through a different activity each day over the span of several weeks to reinforce these skills and provide ongoing practice.

* * * *

Another essential writing skill is summarization, which has been proven to improve writing performance for all students—even those who struggle with writing. To develop his students’ summarization skills, Mr. Jones decides to use NEO Share to do a six-word memoir activity, which he found in the TWIN Ideas at the Renaissance Training Center online.

He starts the lesson by introducing the concept of the six-word memoir. Some claim that Ernest Hemingway created the six-word memoir when challenged by his writing colleagues to tell a story in less than 10 words. Hemingway, legend has it, bested them by four words. The result:

For sale, baby shoes. Never worn.

Like the example above, a powerful six-word memoir should address key ideas and raise questions. For example:

• Who is selling the shoes? • Why are they for sale? • Why were they never worn?

After discussing these questions with his students, Mr. Jones shares a few other examples of six-word memoirs. He leads a discussion with his students about how challenging it can be to distill a larger concept into such few words. Then he asks his students to download a passage about the history of the Statue of Liberty that he has loaded into NEO Share. The passage, which he found at an educational website, explains that the Statue of Liberty was a gift from France on July 4, 1884, as a monument to American freedom. It also explains where the statue is located, how it came to be there, and describes its physical characteristics.

Once his students have read the passage on their NEO 2s, Mr. Jones instructs them to summarize the passage in just six words. Then they send their work to NEO Share. When all students have completed this task, Mr. Jones pulls up several students’ work on the projector and leads a whole-class discussion on why the students chose the six words they did. One student wrote: “Gift from France, American liberty symbol.” Another wrote: “A birthday gift, 15 stories tall.” Still another: “Woman with torch in New York.” Mr. Jones uses this opportunity to talk about main idea and supporting details, which are key elements of summarization.

Beyond this initial lesson, Mr. Jones revisits the six-word memoir activity often across the content areas to give his students further practice summarizing concisely. In English language arts, for instance, he asks his students to describe a character in the book they are reading in just six words. He also asks them to summarize what happened in the latest chapter in just six words. He even gives the students the opportunity to craft six- word memoirs to describe specific aspects of their own lives.