Published in the March 4 – 17, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Nathan Winchell’s sixth-grade class at El Toro Elementary School
Pick up that pencil and write.
Writers don’t write books or stories, they write sentences. Sentences are made up of words, which are units of sound that convey an idea or thought. Those words need to be organized into the right order to give meaning to the message you are communicating.
Words are sounds that have meaning. The words that we use today are made up of letters from the alphabet. And the alphabet is a kind of way to draw sounds that combined together make specific words. The Phoenicians of ancient history gave us the idea that you can “draw” sounds to communicate an idea.
Grammar is another part of sentences. For example, the rules of grammar give us a choice of word tenses that let us know if an action happened in the past, is happening now, or will happen in the future.
Punctuation gives us the emotions of what we are saying in a sentence. For example, a period at the end of a sentence tells us that sentence is making a declaration. A question mark tells us that the sentence is asking something, such as in an interrogation or an interview. An exclamation mark shows excitement such as when you are shouting. Wow!
Commas are like breaks in a sentence that allow the reader to “take a breath” so it’s easier to read.
We can express our sentences in many mediums such as a webpage, on the TV news, social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and in this newspaper column you’re now reading.
Writing sentences is fun because it helps you communicate with many other people in many ways to express yourself. With sentences, you can share a message such as facts, opinions and feelings.
After a junior journalist writing workshop by Morgan Hill Life Publisher Marty Cheek, Nathan Winchell’s sixth-grade class a El Toro Elementary School wrote this column.
