Moving Beyond the Sentence Level
by Dr. Ruslana Westerlund
I’ve been seeing an overwhelming majority of language teaching at the sentence level. I don’t know where it comes from but I think it goes back to traditional linguistics where all of the language level work was done in the service of the sentence (from diagramming sentences in the 80s, to correcting sentences to fixing punctuation of sentences, etc). Then we have sentence starters, sentence frames, etc. (When will kids start their own sentences? - that’s a blog for another day). But when we communicate, we use sentences for particular purposes, in the context of texts, and yet, in teaching, most of the "strategies" are reduced to sentence level, and the rest are at "vocab" level.
In this blog, I invite you to move to the whole text level of text (termed as Discourse in WIDA 2012 and 2020 Standards). In the previous blog, I wrote about Paragraph Level. The reason I'm inviting you to up to the whole text is because cohesion is one of the weakest areas of students' writing. As a reminder, check out my blog on Cohesion.
The WIDA Key Language Uses are defined as genre families (see Key Language Uses, Closer Look pages in Section 4), and we drew on genre theory and the corresponding pedagogy to define them. Genre level is always about the whole text, even if you are working on a sentence. What genre does that sentence serve? Why are we writing sentences to begin with? What jobs are those sentences serving?
To get away from sentence level work, start with the end: what is my learning objective and what is the summative genre that meets that objective? Below you will see a text where the summative genre is an argument: What impact does the government have on its people? Learning target: I can analyze how the Constitution and Bill of Rights impacted people prior to 1800 (include impact of various groups). I use AI to help me generate mentor texts.
Newcomers can absolutely do whole text work through Message Abundancy (Gibbons, 2009), Mode Continuum, the Teaching and Learning Cycle, and other Macro-scaffolding frameworks. The Teaching and Learning Cycle activities in the context of Social Studies are described in our book Making Language Visible in Social Studies: A Guide to Disciplinary Literacy in the Social Studies Classroom.
In the resources below I’m going to revisit the good ol’ Discourse - Sentence - Word WIDA has had for 20+ years. Table one analyses a mentor text following DSW pattern and Table two gives you a few activities to get going beyond sentence level work.
Mentor text for the Learning Objective
Learning Objective: I can analyze how the Constitution and the Bill of Rights impacted people prior to 1880s (include impact of various groups).
*The mentor text and the inspiration for the activities came from my work with a school district in Missouri.
This text is an argument. The claim is the last sentence in the first paragraph. It is revisited again in the summary.
| 4th grade: What impact does the government have on its people? Learning target: I can analyze how the Constitution and Bill of Rights impacted people prior to 1800 (include impact of various groups) |
| In 1787, after the United States became independent, leaders made a set of rules for the government called the Constitution. Two years later, they added the Bill of Rights, which listed important freedoms, like the right to free speech and a fair trial. The Constitution and Bill of Rights made life better for some people, but not everyone was treated equally. |
| White men who owned land had the most benefits. They could vote, run for office, and had protections like fair trials. They had the most power in the new government. But women did not have the same rights. They could not vote, work in government jobs, or help make laws. Women had to follow the laws but didn’t get to decide on them. They had to keep fighting for equal rights even after the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written. |
| Enslaved people had almost no rights. The Constitution allowed slavery, which meant enslaved people were treated like property and had no freedoms. They could not make their own choices, and the Bill of Rights did not help them. Native Americans also did not get the protections from these new rules. The government often took their land, and their opinions were not heard when decisions were made. They faced many problems, and settlers and government actions made their lives difficult. The Constitution did not protect their rights or land. |
| Some African Americans in the North were free, but they still did not have the same rights as white people. They could not vote and often faced unfair treatment. The Bill of Rights did not stop people from treating them badly. In the end, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were supposed to protect people’s rights, but they mostly helped white men who owned land. Women, enslaved people, Native Americans, and free African Americans had to keep fighting for fairness and freedom. It took many years for more people to have equal rights. |
| Level of Language | Features in This Text | Examples from Text |
| Discourse Level Organizing ideas into a historical explanation (Cause/Consequence across groups) |
• Historical Orientation • Text Opener/Claim previewing unequal effects • Consequences for specific groups (White men, Women, Enslaved people, Native Americans, Free African Americans) • Summative Evaluation of fairness and rights |
The Constitution and Bill of Rights made life better for some people, but not everyone was treated equally. (then consequences for each group follow) |
| Sentence Level Showing relationships and building logical flow |
• Temporal Themes (In 1787…, Two years later…) • Causal/ contrastive connectors (but, which meant, even after) • Negative modality to show rights denied (could not, did not, had to) • Passive or relational processes to express conditions of oppression (were treated, were not heard) • Listing actions/rights to show disparity |
They could vote, run for office, and had protections like fair trials. Women could not vote… or help make laws. The government often took their ancestral land. |
| Word / Phrase Level Building knowledge density and precision with participant groups |
• Expanded noun groups for historical actors, e.g.,White men who owned land; the inhumane practice of slavery; fairness and long-deserved freedom • Technical/ specialized vocabulary (Constitution, Bill of Rights, rights, freedoms) • Location and time prepositional phrases (in the North, after the United States became independent) • Evaluative language to show impact (treated like property, long-deserved) |
White men who owned land the same rights as white people treated like property with no human freedoms fairness and long-deserved freedom. |
| Level of Text | Activities for Students | Teacher Activities |
|---|---|---|
| Discourse Level (Whole text structure & purpose) How the text is organized to explain causes and consequences of unequal rights |
1️⃣ Group Sorting: Cut apart the paragraphs. Students sort into: • Orientation • Impact on White Men • Impact on Women • Impact on Enslaved People • Impact on Native Americans • Impact on Free African Americans • Summary 2️⃣ Flow Map: Students map the Claim → Consequences chain and add arrows for cause/effect. 3️⃣ Audience & Purpose Discussion: Who is this written for? Why explain the differences between groups? |
• Color-code each stage for visibility • Provide Genre structure as a graphic organizer • Ask guiding questions: “Why is the text ordered this way?” |
| Sentence Level (Logical relationships between ideas) How sentences show contrast, cause, and time |
4️⃣ “Spot the Connectors” Hunt: Highlight connectors in purple (but, Two years later, In the end). Sort into meanings: Time • Contrast • Consequence. 5️⃣ Match Connectors to Meaning: Provide halves of sentences—students attach correct connector for meaning. (ex: But women did not…) 6️⃣ Rewrite for Reason: Students rewrite short sentences to show cause: Women could not vote → Because women could not vote… |
• Teach students to group connectors into contrast, cause, time in their L1. • Think-aloud modeling: “This connector shows disagreement…” • Encourage oral rehearsal before writing |
| Word / Phrase Level (Precise nouns, powerful verbs, evaluative meaning) How expanded noun groups build precise meaning & verbs show conditions of power/rights |
7️⃣ Noun Group Expand Game: Start with a basic noun and expand: women → women in the new nation → women who couldn’t vote 8️⃣ Verb Sort: Sort verbs into categories: • Power (could vote, run) • Oppression (were treated like property, could not decide) 9️⃣ Everyday/Specialized or General/Specific Vocabular: Students replace general words with historical vocabulary: “people” → enslaved people / landowners “rules” → Constitution / Bill of Rights |
• Highlight how word choice changes meaning and stance • Build noun group templates: (Classifier + Thing + Qualifier) • Provide verb banks for each group in the history Other activities for Noun Groups |
To truly support students in history, we must move beyond fixing sentences and help them understand how whole texts make meaning.
Cheering you on!
Ruslana
P.S. Our new book Building a Language Toolkit for Teachers: A Functional Approach is coming in March 2026 (Routledge publication)
