Story Grammar Marker Cohesive Tie Jargon {A Product Review}

Hi Friends!

My love affair with Story Grammar Marker continues. Seriously, people. For my kiddos, it just works. And for me, it works because I have 50+ kids of all ages and abilities levels. And I use Story Grammar Marker with them all. Every. Last. One.

While I’ve done several posts in the past on how I introduce SGM and how I use it with my younger babies, this post is primarily about how I’ve been using it with my older kiddos. You can find the first post in my Story Grammar Marker series HERE.

Expanding Sentence Length:

Many of my older students are working on writing. More specifically, they are working on expanding sentence length and complexity throughout their written responses. A lot of my students have trouble with this. As 3rd-5th grades, their simple sentences make their writing below what is expected at their grade level. “This weekend I stayed at home. I watched tv. I played with my brother. It was fun.”

We’ve been talking a lot about using conjunctions and “cohesive ties” to tie their sentences together to make them more complex. My friends at Mindwing Concepts have a product that fits these lessons perfectly: their SGM Cohesive Tie JARgon kit!

The kit comes with a Jar (pun intended!), 5 clothes pins, a silky clip-tie, and durable cohesive tie word cards. The easier word is on one side of the card (like ‘but’), and the harder word is on the other side (like ‘however’).

Our Cohesive Tie Lesson:

I started off having my students tell me about what they did for Halloween using words that I specifically chose for them. As they said them, they clipped them on their tie.

After they got the hang of it (it didn’t take long because it just “clicked” with the tangibles to play with!), we used them with the story book From Seed to Pumpkin. They sequenced the steps in the pumpkin life cycle and retold the sequence orally first with the words, and then I had them write it!

After we used the easier words with the sequence retell, I then showed them how they could “take it up a notch” with the more difficult words:

Overall, it has been a HUGE hit! I have been using the JARgon kit for several months now in many different ways, and the students ADORE it! It’s easy to implement, and at only $19.95, it’s easy on the poor teacher’s pocket too! You can purchase the Cohesive Tie JARgon kit from Mindwind’s Website by clicking HERE. 

Have you used this kit? What about other SGM products? I’d love to know what you’re using and how!

And now I’m off to the airport! Hope to see you in Denver!