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Writing Skills Lesson Plan
Amber Strickland
School of Education, Liberty University
EDUC 319: Teaching Writing and Language Arts to Diverse Learners
Dr. McElhany
February 16, 2026
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Writing Skills Lesson Plan
PRELIMINARY INFORMATION
Text Title: Cloudy with a Chance
of Meatballs
Grade Level: 2nd Grade
Content Area:
English/Language Arts
Central Focus: Students will analyze sentence structures in
a mentor text and apply their understanding by
identifying, combining, expanding, and elaborating
sentences to strengthen their writing.
CONTENT STANDARDS
State Standards 2.LU The student will use conventions of Standard English
when speaking and writing, differentiating between
contexts that call for formal English and situations where
informal discourse is more appropriate.
2.LU.1 Grammar
A. Produce and expand complete sentences, both simple
and compound.
ELAR Standards Click or tap here to enter text.
LEARNING OBJECTIVE(S)
These must be behavioral and measurable.
Statements of what students will know, understand, and be able to do at the end of the lesson (consider all three
domains). Include condition, performance, and criterion.
Given mentor sentences from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and sentence building
activities, students will:
Correctly identify and construct simple, compound, and complex sentences with 80%
accuracy.
Combine two short sentences into one compound or complex sentence in 4 out of 5
attempts.
Write one paragraph that includes at least one compound sentence and one complex
sentence, meeting 3 out of 4 rubric expectations.
SENTENCE MENTOR MODELS
Use the mentor text to identify two examples of each of these types of sentences to share as
mentor models.
a. Simple sentence with one subject and one predicate
“It had never rained before.”
“The sky became dark.”
b. Simple sentence with two subjects or two predicates
“The wind blew and the food fell.”
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“The townspeople cheered and ran outside.”
c. Compound sentence
“The food fell from the sky, and the people ran to collect it.”
“It rained soup and juice, but it never rained rain.”
d. Complex sentence
“When the clouds rolled in, everyone ran outside.”
“Because there were no stores, the people depended on the weather.”
e. Compound-complex sentence
“When the weather changed, the food grew larger, and the townspeople
became afraid.”
“Although the food had once been wonderful, it became dangerous, and the
people had to leave.”
SENTENCE ELABORATION ACTIVITIES
Create sentence elaboration activities for your content area. Generate an example for each
type of activity listed below.
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a. Two sentence scrambles
Students in a group will be given sheets of paper containing one word each.
They must line up, holding their word/paper to display the words in proper
order to form a sentence. For example, from Cloudy with a Chance of
Meatballs:
Meatballs / huge / out / the / clouds / of / blew
Students will line up to form:
“Huge meatballs blew out of the clouds.”
Another group will be given the words:
Morning / snow / the / up / falling / window / we / to / see / outside / woke /
our / next
Students will line up to form:
“The next morning we woke up to see snow falling outside our window.”
b. Two sentence combining activities
Students will be given a worksheet containing two sentences that need to be
combined. For example:
Worksheet 1 would include the sentences: “The people were happy.” And “The
food was delicious.”
Students will combine them and write “The people were happy, and the food
was delicious.”
Another worksheet will contain: “The town was a mess.” And “The sanitation
department didn’t know what to do.”
Students will combine them and write “The town was a mess, and the
sanitation department didn’t know what to do.”
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c. A sentence elaboration activity using the “W” questions
Using visual aids of a chart containing “Who/What?” “Where?” “When?”, a
student will be given a simple sentence that they must rewrite.
For example, a student will be given the sentence “It rained.”
The student will fill in the chart with the appropriate sentences:
Who/what? – It rained hamburgers.
Where? – It rained hamburgers over the town of Chewandswallow.
When? – It rained hamburgers over the town of Chewandswallow for lunch on
Tuesday.
The student will then rewrite the sentence: “For lunch on Tuesday, it rained
hamburgers over the town of Chewandswallow.”
d. An expanded kernel sentence
Students will be divided into groups of 3. One person will represent the
adjectives, one person will represent the adverbs, and one person will
represent a prepositional phrase. The group will be given a simple sentence,
and they must add their part to the sentence to make a new, expanded
sentence.
For example, given the sentence “The rolls fell.”
Person 1 will add adjectives. “The giant, crusty rolls fell.”
Person 2 will add adverbs. “The giant, crusty rolls fell heavily.”
Person 3 will add a prepositional phrase. “The giant, crusty rolls fell heavily
onto the rooftops.”
CONTENT READING PARAGRAPH PRACTICE ACTIVITY
Use a sample paragraph from your mentor text and generate a paragraph practice activity
using a suggested teaching method from your text.
The teacher will provide a sample paragraph from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and
lead the students in a sentence combining demonstration. The teacher will then utilize the “I
do, we do, you do” model with the class.
The teacher uses the example of the two simple sentences previously mentioned. She
explains to the students what the purpose of sentence combining is: to make writing stronger
and more descriptive. Using chart paper, the teacher combines the wo sentences into a
compound sentence. “When the sky became dark, it had never rained food before.”
Students will work with a partner to combine teacher provided sentences into compound or
complex sentences. Provided sentences include: The cat climbed a tree. The cat got scared.
The cat was afraid to climb down. The teacher walks around the room and guides students by
asking “What word can we add to connect the ideas?” “Can you start one sentence with
because, when, or and to show timing or the cause?”
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Students will then work independently to combine new sentences. They will then share their
sentences with the class and discuss whether the new sentence improves the clarity and
detail
of the sentence.
REFERENCES
Use current APA guidelines to reference materials.
Saddler, B. (2012). Teacher’s guide to effective sentence writing. Guilford Press.
