Uplevelling Sentences

What is uplevelling sentences?

Uplevelling sentences is the process of improving an existing sentence by adding a wider range of grammatical features. Children could be asked to uplevel a base sentence provided by the teacher. Alternatively, children might edit their own writing by uplevelling sentences within it.

Here is an example of how a sentence might be uplevelled:

Base sentence: The dragon flew down to his cave.

Uplevelled sentence: After a long flight, the tired dragon swooped down to his warm, cosy cave.

In the example above, a fronted adverbial was used to uplevel the sentence and several adjectives were included to make the sentence more descriptive. The verb ‘flew’ was uplevelled to ‘swooped’ too.

There are many ways in which children might be asked to uplevel a sentence and this can be varied depending on what the class is learning about at the time. Here are some possible ways uplevelling sentences could occur:

Use powerful verbs

The witch flew through the sky on her broomstick.

The witch zoomed through the sky on her broomstick.

Use expanded noun phrases or improve adjective choice

The witch flew through the sky on her broomstick.

The kind, friendly witch flew through the dark sky on her wooden broomstick.

Use coordinating or subordinating conjunctions

The witch flew through the sky on her broomstick.

The witch flew through the sky on her broomstick but suddenly heard a terrifying sound!

Include adverbs

The witch flew through the sky on her broomstick.

The witch flew gracefully through the sky on her broomstick.

Use a sentence starter

The witch flew through the sky on her broomstick.

After making a magical potion, the witch flew through the sky on her broomstick.

Uplevelling Sentences KS2

In KS2, children will become more experienced at editing their own writing. This is a really important part of the writing process and uplevelling sentences will be a very important part of this.

Here are some ways that uplevelling sentences could support children editing their writing:

1. You could use a visualiser to show one of the children’s writing on the board. Sentences could be chosen from this to uplevel as a class. If, for example, you are in Year 4 and are focusing on using fronted adverbials, a sentence without one could be chosen and the class could work together to uplevel it. You might have a bank of fronted adverbials displayed for children to refer to. Uplevelling sentences in this supportive way will then help children to do this with their own writing.
2. Instead of just giving children back their writing and asking them to uplevel sentences within it, you could instead be more specific and highlight sentences that you want them to improve by uplevelling. This is really helpful for children who might find it hard to uplevel a whole piece of writing independently.
3. You could get children to work together to uplevel sentences within each other’s writing. The advantage of collaborative uplevelling is that children have the opportunity to learn from each other.

How to use and support uplevelling sentences

If children have not had experience of uplevelling sentences, then it is important to model how to do it in a very structured way. In a shared writing activity, sentences could be displayed on the board and improved as a class. Children might then work with a partner on a whiteboard before feeding back ideas to the class.

To support children with uplevelling their writing, providing them with a word bank is really helpful.

Click here to download a FREE set of uplevelling sentences worksheets and word banks.