WHAT?

When I was a primary teacher, I used to do a lesson which was really enjoyable called, the longest sentence in the world. I challenged the class to start with a tiny sentence with very few words and then add more and more words, while still a single sentence and keeping the sense of it.

WHY?

Clearly, we were developing ideas of structure, parts of speech, clauses etc. but how much more engaging and easy would it have been to use technology? A lot, I’d say. We could have really concentrated on the sentences rather than on how to write it down on paper with lots of drafting and revisions.

HOW?

Recently I was reminded of a site via Twitter which has recently been developed into a fantastic, simple tool:

http://www.telescopictext.com/ (original site)

http://www.telescopictext.org/ (new tool site)

In a few minutes, you can do exactly what I did in my lesson – and then save it to come back to later. You need a free account.

Here’s a quick screencast so you can see how to get going on creating your own telescopic texts and see what my son came up with in a very short time:

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