ABSTRACT
The students' writing often sounds choppy because students compose sentence-by-sentence as details occur to them. By teaching them appositives, this chapter can help them embed details in their sentences. It focuses on appositives and explains how the teachers can use the natural language of the students in lessons that bring appositives into their written work. Hermania teaches in an urban sixth-grade classroom. Hermania uses the term 'nonessential' with her students, preparing for the punctuation rule that nonessential elements are normally separated from an independent clause by commas. The students think about the comma question, a little worried about making a mistake. Rodney, however, follows what his ear tells him about the sound of the sentence and suggests commas before and after the added phrase. The teacher discusses the using of appositives to combine sentences since she and the students share a common language about writing techniques.
