Do you want to visit Florida?  Would you like to see California?  Florida is on the Atlantic Ocean.  California is on the Pacific Ocean.  California has deserts.  Florida has wetlands.

Ask the students to listen carefully as you read the passage.  Encourage them to identify any problems they detect in your reading or to suggest ways to improve the paragraph.  Have students work in pairs to combine the sentences by adding conjunctions or by using semicolons.  Make sure they know that a comma is required before a conjunction.

Sentence Structure:

Have students create three to four sentences, one of each type, about a vacation to Yosemite, and then share them in small groups.

Simple Sentence: The boys pitched a tent.

Compound Sentence: The Anderson family took a long hike through the wilderness and they went sightseeing on horseback.

Complex Sentence: When we sat in traffic on the way to Yosemite, I started to keep a journal of my trip.

After students understand the value of sentence variety in paragraphs, have them write a paragraph about this trip using the developed sentences and adding other sentences as needed for a well developed, cohesive paragraph.

Commas: Have students write a sentence following each comma rule and ask them to justify their use. Find examples of the comma rules in newspapers or magazines and mount them on construction paper.

Conventions Activities: Through a variety of activities, students show the use of correct conventions.

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