In this video lesson I show you what a family-style writing lesson looks like. Specifically, we are doing a sentence imitation exercise based on the method by Jeff Anderson.

Charlotte Mason (and Karen Glass) both mention studying great writing to learn how to write better. But how do you do that? I tried teaching my son to imitate great writing, but I was missing something. I’d give him a sentence from a book and then instruct him to use that sentence as a guide to write his own.

You can probably imagine how that went…

I was so excited to discover Jeff Anderson’s method of sentence imitation because it addressed all the stumbling blocks I was tripping over and gave me direction on how to actually teach it.

 First, by asking children to notice the sentence and point out what they see is a lot like an object lesson. You can ask questions to direct their attention, but for the most part they are the ones noticing.

Second, by writing down your own imitation you are giving them two things to compare, to find the relationship between the two. It makes the sentence structure much more clear.

Third, the child writes their own sentence based on the structure of the sentences they compared.

Here is the exact method:

S E N T E N C E  I M I T A T I O N

(from Patterns of Power by Jeff Anderson)

Invitation to Notice 

• Show a beautiful, interesting and/or effective model sentence
• Ask “What do you notice?”
• Children study the sentence. Discuss observations as family. 

Invitation to Compare and Contrast

• Show the model sentence and an imitation for review of the pattern and focus phrase. 
• Ask “how are these sentences alike and different?”
• Children study the sentences and discuss as a family how they are alike and different. Look for patterns. 

Invitation to Imitate

• Show the model sentence and an imitation for review of the pattern and focus phrase. 
• Child can imitate independently or  together (with a parent or siblings)
• Read imitation aloud to make sure it makes sense. 

Additional activities:

• Invitation to label: Ask students to circle, identify, and/or label something specific in the sentence that stands out to them. If an author uses a series of adjectives separated by commas, for instance, the student might label the part of speech (adjectives) and the punctuation (commas in a series). 
• Invitation to revise: Talk with your students about how revision can take a great sentence and make it even better. Encourage them to think about how they might revise or change the sentence. This stage also empowers students to see themselves as experts, on the same “level” as published authors.