What is the impact of peer-assisted sentence-combining teaching on primary pupils' writing performance?

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What techniques were used in the intervention?

The teachers involved in the intervention directly taught the pupils how to produce more sophisticated sentences using the sentence-combining teaching method in conjunction with the peer-assisted technique.

The children were taught sentence-combining in five units, with six lessons per unit. The units focused on the following areas:

Unit 1 – combining two related sentences into a compound sentence using the connecting words and, but and because.
Unit 2 – embedding an adjective or adverb from one sentence into another. e.g. “They run to a cave” and “They run quickly” combined to “They run quickly to a cave.”
Units 3 & 4 – creating complex sentences by embedding an adverbial clause (unit 3), and an adjectival clause (unit 4) from one sentence into the other e.g. “The students all cheered” and “The movie stopped” combined to “They all cheered when the movie stopped”,
Unit 5 – embedding multiple adjectives and adverbs, to create adverbial and adjectival clauses e.g. “Ralph stuck his head out,” “Ralph was in Ryan’s pocket,” “Ralph looked around,” and “Ralph did not know where he was” combined to “Ralph, who was in Ryan’s pocket, did not know where he was, but stuck his head out and looked around”.

For all thirty lessons, pupils were put into pairs and took it in turns to coach one another. More able pupils were paired with less able pupils. The peer assisted strategy was integrated into the usual daily literacy lessons.

The researchers described the sequence involved in teaching sentence-combining as follows:

pupils need to be taught about sentence formulation and grammar;
once the pupil becomes accustomed to the process of sentence formation, it is suggested that there is less mental strain which frees capacity to concentrate on other writing processes such as planning or revising;
the process of combining sentences is primarily a revising skill which is useful for writers in making improvements to existing text.

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Research Home Themes \| Find digests \| About the digests resources glossary researchers contact TRIPS Introduction What impact did sentence-combining instruction have on pupils' writing skills? What techniques were used in the intervention? How were all the lessons designed? How did the teaching in the two groups (sentence combining and grammar) differ? How was the research carried out? How were the findings measured? What are the implications of this study for my practice? Where can I find out more? Send us your feedback Collated digests To view/remove/add notes and save your collated digests click here Get Word Reader What is the impact of peer-assisted sentence-combining teaching on primary pupils' writing performance? This digest found in English Send to a friend Word doc 60KB Printer friendly Collate for later What techniques were used in the intervention? The teachers involved in the intervention directly taught the pupils how to produce more sophisticated sentences using the sentence-combining teaching method in conjunction with the peer-assisted technique. The children were taught sentence-combining in five units, with six lessons per unit. The units focused on the following areas: Unit 1 – combining two related sentences into a compound sentence using the connecting words and, but and because. Unit 2 – embedding an adjective or adverb from one sentence into another. e.g. “They run to a cave” and “They run quickly” combined to “They run quickly to a cave.” Units 3 & 4 – creating complex sentences by embedding an adverbial clause (unit 3), and an adjectival clause (unit 4) from one sentence into the other e.g. “The students all cheered” and “The movie stopped” combined to “They all cheered when the movie stopped”, Unit 5 – embedding multiple adjectives and adverbs, to create adverbial and adjectival clauses e.g. “Ralph stuck his head out,” “Ralph was in Ryan’s pocket,” “Ralph looked around,” and “Ralph did not know where he was” combined to “Ralph, who was in Ryan’s pocket, did not know where he was, but stuck his head out and looked around”. For all thirty lessons, pupils were put into pairs and took it in turns to coach one another. More able pupils were paired with less able pupils. The peer assisted strategy was integrated into the usual daily literacy lessons. The researchers described the sequence involved in teaching sentence-combining as follows: pupils need to be taught about sentence formulation and grammar; once the pupil becomes accustomed to the process of sentence formation, it is suggested that there is less mental strain which frees capacity to concentrate on other writing processes such as planning or revising; the process of combining sentences is primarily a revising skill which is useful for writers in making improvements to existing text.