Subject: ELA (English Language Arts), ESL/ELL (English Language Learning)
Lesson Length: 30 - 45 mins
Topic: Conjunctions
Grade Level: 4, 5, 6
Standards / Framework:
Brief Description: Students will practice using conjunctions to combine sentences.
Know Before You Start: This lesson is intended to reinforce the idea of using conjunctions to combine sentences. Use this activity as practice, or an informal assessment tool.
Hook:
- Read and discuss the sample comic. Focus on how the sentences have been combined to create one sentence by including a conjunction.
- Explain that the most common conjunctions are and, but, and so.
Activity:
- Instruct students to combine the sentences below by using the conjunction and, but, or so. Remind students that when we are combining two complete sentences, we need to place a comma before the conjunction.
- The rain is very heavy, so the game will be canceled today.
- Emma has one sister and she has three cousins.
- I do not like pasta but I do like pizza.
- Have students create a "Conjunction Comic" to demonstrate their conjunction skills on sentences they’ve created on their own.
Closure:
- Go over student answers as a class.
- Have students present their comics to the class or to a partner.
Differentiation:
- Allow students to use the speech-to-text feature.
- Allow students to use the voiceover feature to read their comics aloud.
- Allow students to work in pairs or groups as needed.
- Print out the sample comic and have students highlight the conjunctions they used.
- Differentiate the conjunctions used based on need and classroom focus. For example, advanced students can be introduced to subordinating conjunctions such as: after, as, therefore, whenever, until, since.