So, I noticed that my students don't really use adjectives or adverbs. For that reason, there isn't a whole lot of detail in their sentences. So, I had the class practice writing sentences containing adjectives and adverbs. I even expanded the meaning of an adverb for them. Because an adverb is commonly understood to refer to the way in which a verb occurs. However, an adverb also refers to when and where it occurs. As such, I gave them adjective and adverb word searches that they could work on in their free time. I hoped that if they became aware of other adjectives and adverbs as well as an expanded meaning of adverbs, they would use them more. That wasn't the case. They still equally didn't use them.
So, I came up with another idea. I had students form a list of all of the nouns in one of their previous paragraphs and then add an adjective to each noun and an adverb to each verb. A lot of students were averse to that idea. One of my students expressed her aversion as soon as I said "make a list." So, I don't know whether it was just the mundane nature of making a list that made her averse. I guess if that was a problem, I would've settled for allowing them to simply insert their adjectives into their sentences.
I ended up not pursuing my idea because my students weren't all that excited about it. To me, it would've been a great activity. It would have given my students practice in expanding on their sentences. I would love to see more detail in their sentences. Oh well.... At least they seem to be getting down how to write a main idea for a paragraph.
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