How to Construct a Combining Activity

Step One: Choose a professional sentence model containing a sentence composing tool you'd like your students to learn and practice.

Model Sentence with Appositive

A tall, rawhide man in an unbuttoned, sagging vest, he was visibly embarrassed by any furnishings that suggested refinement.

--Richter, Conrad, "Early Marriage"

Step Two: Write an imitation of the model sentence, and then deconstruct your imitation into a list of several short sentences.

Imitation

A perceptive, pleasant bunch in Mr. Jabowski's really smart creative writing class, the students were clearly upset by any treatment that smacked of favoritism.

Imitation Sentence Deconstructed

They were a perceptive, pleasant bunch.
They were a bunch in Mr. Jabowski's really smart creative writing class.
The students were clearly upset by something.
They were upset by any treatment that smacked of favoritism.

Step Three: Give directions for the combining, either "cued" or "uncued." Cued means students are given help to complete the combining activity in the form of underlining. The words italicized (as in the above example) can be combined into a sentence to match the model. Uncued means students must determine on their own what parts of each sentence to combine to produce one sentence resembling the model, a far more challenging, and ultimately much more instructive and beneficial task than "cued" combining.

Directions

Cued - Study the model sentence, and then combine the underlined parts from the list of sentences below it into one sentence that matches the structure of the model sentence.

Uncued - Study the model sentence, and then combine the list of sentences below it into one sentence that matches the structure of the model sentence.

Variations:

Since combining to match a model familiarizes students with the structure of the model, have students, after combining sentences to match the model, write an imitation of that same model, using its structure but the student's own content.
Occasionally, use open-ended combining, in which students are given only a deconstructed model sentence, broken into a series of short sentences. Have them try several structures and arrangements for combining the list into just one sentence. Afterward, show students the author's original sentence and discuss preferences--the author's or one of their own. One caution: Tell them to avoid stringing the short sentences together monotonously, usually with "and" between them. Instead, challenge them to use the sentence composing tools they've been learning: participles, appositives, absolutes, adverb or adjective clauses, etc.
Have students find sentences from their current literary studies to deconstruct. Have them design either guided or open-ended combining activities to try out on each other. The process of deconstructing well constructed sentences offers subliminal knowledge of the crafting of sentences; that knowledge recommends the task.
Present a model sentence for students to deconstruct into at least ten short sentences. Remove the model from their view and challenge them to reconstruct the model as nearly as they can.

All of the published sentence composing materials include many similar activities, including the variations.

How to construct an unscrambling activity

How to construct an imitating activity

How to construct an expanding activity