Sentence Auction

\"This activity helps students analyze common writing errors through a personalized activity since they are trying to buy their own sentences. Once a week or once a month, a teacher can hold a \"Sentence Auction.\" The teacher takes sentence examples from student writing — some of which have errors and some that don\'t, and writes them on a handout or overhead projector. The identity of the student who wrote each sentence is not revealed. To begin the sentence auction, each student is given an \"account\" of perhaps $300. The students are told to \"bid\" on the good sentences. The winner is the student with the highest number of \"good\" sentences.

The teacher takes on the persona of an \"Auctioneer\" and opens the bidding at $10.
The teacher reads out the sentence confidently exactly as it is written. \"Him want to go to school very bad.\" Who will give me $10?\"
The students take turns bidding until the teacher decides who has \"won\" the bid.
Some sentences will not sell because students will know they are \"bad.\" Just leave those sentences and move to the next one.
After all the sentences have been sold, the teacher goes through the list and the students say whether the sentence was good or bad. If they agree that it was a bad sentence, then the teacher asks them to explain how they can make it a \"good\" sentence.
Finally the students can count how many \"good\" sentences they have (since they may have bought some bad ones) and a winner is declared.

The teacher may want to give a little prize or certificate to the student. In a variation of this activity students can work in pairs or groups to buy the sentences.\"

Source:

Robertson, K. (n.d.). Improving Writing Skills: ELLs and the Joy of Writing. Retrieved September 16, 2016, from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/improving-writing-skills-ells-and-joy-writing

ESL vs. Dual Language Immersion: New York and Utah