How to Teach Key Sentences with a Writing Lesson Plan Drill

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Get this low prep writing lesson plan and help ELL students learn to write four kinds of sentences. 

Writing Lesson Plan Introduction

students This writing lesson plan reinforces skills by reviewing existing knowledge and focusing student attention on four sentence patterns. This lesson is not designed to provide a comprehensive review of the grammar points. Instead, the aim is to help high beginner+ students practice four useful sentence patterns:

  • appositives
  • simple sentence
  • compound sentence
  • complex sentence
This writing lesson plan presents ELL students with a drill. Most of my students don't mind drills when suitated in the right context. Most of my students understand that drills are an effective writing strategy -- but not too often. 

Yes, I admit it. I sometimes negotiate activities with my students. To paraphrase Miranda from Shakespeare's The Tempest, "O brave new world, that classroom has such people in it!'
Writing Lesson Plan with a drill for ELL students
Drills are not always fun but they can be an effective teaching strategy

Writing Lesson Plan Flow

Step 1 Review (10)

Run through the slides. They provide basic explanations and examples. At the end of the slide show, there is a sample question for students to complete as a whole class. This is a chance for the teacher to inspect understanding before moving on to the next task.

Step 2 Introduce Task (5)

With this fresh knowledge, students will begin a writing assignment. The students will:

  • watch short video called Paperman (5 minutes).
  • make notes about plot and details
  • identify 5-7 main chunks in the plot 

Step 3 Watch video (5)

The 5-minute video is called Paperman.  

 

Step 4 Writing (25)

I suggest the following process:

  • give students a chance to work in pairs if they want (some of my writing students hate pair work)
  • allow 10-15 minutes to outline main chunks of the plot
  • point out that each will chunk will need 4 sentences

Output:

  • Each student will divide the story into 5-7 chunks. Each chunk will have 4 sentences.
  • That means each student will have written 20-28 sentences.

Writing Lesson Plan Option (15)

This activity is designed for student development without the need for teacher review or feedback. Peer review is possible. Honestly, though, it’s not something I do because many students don’t like to get writing feedback from other students.

Another writing activity

Love drills? Hey, who doesn’t? Why not consider another writing lesson plan with drills. This one helps ELL students learn writing through sentence combining.