The Sentence Train

THE REVOLUTIONARY NEW WAY TO TEACH SENTENCES

Background:

 The Sentence Train™ concept was developed by Dr Ian Hunter as a rapid means to teach sentence construction to younger children and those struggling with English composition. Typically, a teacher will commence teaching using simple sentences, move to compound sentences, leading to complex sentences. Word classes, such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives, are taught, and then clausal constructions and modifiers added as a way to develop the sentence. All these techniques are rooted in structural or functional grammar. Such an approach is not without shortcomings. 

Because of this, The Sentence Train™ method makes sentence teaching easier and more rapid. The method breaks sentences into units of meaning, or chunks.

• • • Students learn groups of words that are often used together–so common phrases are assimilated. 
    • The rules of punctuation are easily mastered. 
    • The student rapidly learns different sentence styles, opening a route to improved composition skills.

The Sentence Train™ Teacher Pack

Suitable for ages 5 -12

The Sentence Train™ Teacher Pack allows classroom instruction on a magnetic whiteboard using large magnetic train pieces. These pieces are easily visible across a classroom, and can be used to teach and model sentence construction. The Teacher Pack allows modelling by the classroom teacher, while the Student Pack allows students to interact in smaller groups with their own trains for sentence construction. 

The Teacher Pack contains:

• • 13 Train pieces (2 engines and an assortment of 13 carriages).
  • The Sentence Train Full-Colour Classroom Instruction Manual
  • 20 punctuation marks (assorted)

The carriages are in different sizes from the blue carriage (the smallest) to the largest carriage (the orange carriage). The different sizes of carriages allow the teacher to write longer or smaller phrases on the carriages—and the blue and green carriages in particular allow the simple addition of single words as required. For example, the blue carriage can usefully be a conjunction—and the green carriage is often used for short phrases or individual adverbs.

The Sentence Train™ Student Pack

Suitable for ages 5 -12

The Sentence Train™ Student Pack contains smaller train pieces and is specially designed to allow group work. The train pieces—in four colourways— easily fit on a desk or workspace. Students can model different sentence styles themselves, and then discuss in groups, or present on magnetic whiteboards. 

The Student Pack contains:

• • 8 locomotives and 32 carriages in four different colours: green, blue, orange, yellow.
  • The Sentence Train Full-Colour Classroom Instruction Manual
  • 46 punctuation marks (assorted)

The pack has been designed like this to allow group work in the classroom to progress. For example, the teacher can have a group of students with the blue set of carriages, another with the orange set, and so forth. 

Used in tandem, the two packs provide an effective method of teaching sentence construction to auditory, visual, and kinaesthetic learners—learning sentence fluency and accuracy in a compelling and memorable fashion.