Something that I always strongly, strongly emphasize in my lessons is making sentences longer. Don’t just give me a boring, short sentence; try to add more RELEVANT information. However, 1st graders really struggle with this, so it’s like a daily game of tug-of-war, trying to get them to add details.

So, today I’m going to create some practice for that! And I’m going to specifially use the W words (plus one H) to do so.

You should know the W words, say them with me now:

Who?

What?

Where?

When?

How?

So, how can we use these to improve our writing?

Ask yourself these questions when you write sentences:

Who? – Who is in the sentence?

What? – What are they doing?

Where? – Where is it happening?

When? – When is it happening?

How? – How are they doing it?

I want you to learn how to create a picture in your mind, with all of these questions being answered.

If you are struggling to remember each part, try counting them on your fingers, and put one finger down when you do write it:

That way, you can write without forgetting each part and having to look back at the list of words.

Here’s a very awesome, amazing, well-written sentence that took me HOURS to come up with:

The dog runs.

What do you think? Great, right? 😀

…No?

Yeah… it’s a sad sentence with no cool W words. So, let’s try to answer the questions and add some fun words:

Who? – Who is in the sentence? —> The big brown dog

What? – What are they doing? —> running around the park

Where? – Where is it happening? —> in the park

When? – When is it happening? —> on a sunny day

How? – How are they doing it? —> very fast

Remember, there is no correct answer to these. It’s all up to you and your imagination. When you have a boring sentence, try to put the sentence into a cool world with lots of ideas. But, make sure it makes sense!

Next, we should put all these idea together into one cool, awesome, spectacular sentence.

Try your best to put them all together into ONE sentence. Avoid making 2. You don’t have to just put them in the same order as you first wrote them! Mix it up! Sentences are clay, and you can mix the colors just like you want to! You can always erase words that you dont need. Just keep the MAIN parts, the ones that answer the W questions.

This is how I might mix these into a sentence:

The big brown dog was running around the park very fast on a sunny day.

Now, it’s time for you to try!!! Yipee!!!

Make these 10 gross, sad sentences into amazing, cool, incredible ones, using W words: