WHAT IT IS:

Especially for elementary classrooms: From The Writing Strategies Book (Serravalo, 2017), Guess What! is an editing strategy for identifying incomplete sentences.

HOW IT WORKS:

Guess What! helps students identify incomplete sentences by saying to themselves “Guess what!” then reading a sentence of their writing. As a response to the statement, the sentence should then make sense if it is a complete sentence but not make sense if it is incomplete.

For example:

• Complete: “Guess What! I like to eat apples.”
• Incomplete: “Guess What! Green trees and grass.”

Encourage students to read aloud when performing such a strategy, and consider a cooperative partner activity where one student reads it aloud, and the other responds with whether it makes sense.