Sentence Stalking #3

In Mechanically Inclined, Jeff Anderson teaches sentence stalking , a way to use mentor texts of any length to draw students' attention to an author's craft, the goal being to highlight what is done well rather than to take kids on an error hunt.

What concepts can we teach from the following sentence?

“’Struggle if you must,’ said he, ‘but kindly remember that I’m hiding down here in this crate and I don’t want to be stepped on, or kicked in the face, or pummeled, or crushed in any way, or squashed, or buffeted about, or bruised, or lacerated, or scarred, or biffed’” (Charlotte’s Web 125).


Highlight the verbs in this sentence.  How many are there?  What effect do they have?

Talk about parallel structure.  

Discuss the commas separating each of the verbs.  Are they necessary?

Notice how to punctuate a quote within a quote.

Observe the punctuation when interrupting a quote with "said he."

Talk about the effect of "said he" vs. "he said." 


What other concepts do you see?

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