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| 1. Using a BLUE colored pencil, underline the first sentence in your paper. Use a YELLOW colored pencil to underline the 2nd sentence. Third sentence is underlined in BLUE , 4th in YELLOW . Repeat the pattern throughout the paper. Once you have completed the underlining, take a look at the paper. If you have one sentence that is several lines long, could it be a run-on? If you have many short sentences, could you combine some together? 2. Using a GREEN colored pencil, circle the first word of each sentence in your paper. Do you have a capital at the beginning of each sentence? 3. Using a PURPLE colored pencil, number the sentences in order. (There should be a number in front of every green circle.) How many sentences do you have? A good paper would have over 20 sentences for a five paragraph essay. If you are short, consider adding descriptive sentences to make the paper more visual for your reader. 4. Using a BLACK colored pencil, list out the first word of each sentence in the margin of your paper. How many sentences start with the same word? You should not have more than 3 sentences starting with the same word. NO more than 2 sentences should start with the word “I”. NO sentences should start with a conjunction (AND, BUT, OR, NOR) 5. Using a RED pencil, put a triangle around the ending punctuation of each sentence. Do you have punctuation at the end of each sentence? Did you remember not to have more than one end mark? For example, “I thought it was awesome!!!” is unacceptable. Do you have at least one question in your story? 6. Using an ORANGE pencil, cross out every time you used the work “like” unless it is being used as a metaphor. For example: He moved like a football player trying to do ballet. (This is OK.) 7. Using your REGULAR pencil, put a rectangle around three nouns and three adjectives that you can improve by using a thesaurus. Circle 3 words you think might not be spelled correctly, then look them up in the dictionary. 8. Create your final draft (a.k.a. beautiful copy) using the improvements you made from this activity! |
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