Pitchforking

What is a pitchfork?

• Draw one on your paper.

Pitchfork

• A pitchfork has one handle and multiple prongs

• In writing/reading it means taking one thing and branching it out into several

things.

• It’s a way to write better, richer, more sophisticated sentences and to give the

reader more of a mental image of what’s happening.

(Can anyone find the pitchfork in that sentence?)

Easiest Ways to Pitchfork

• Pitchforking Descriptions

• Plain Sentence: It would be better. (What is the description? Now you try & pitchfork

it)

• Do we know what “it” is?

• How cool would it be if XOS-7 had a Megastone?

• Pitchfork: It would be cool, stronger and more powerful.

Let’s try some together:

• If you’re going to write a sentence that is just plain and humdrum without

any meaning, emotion and power, that sentence may have good grammar and

punctuation but it’s humdrum and meaningless. It needs to be meaningful

and emotional to impact the reader.

Pitchforking for Descriptions

• If you’re going to write a sentence that is just plain and humdrum without

any meaning, emotion and power, that sentence may have good grammar and

punctuation but it’s humdrum and meaningless. It needs to be meaningful

and emotional to impact the reader.

Easiest Ways to Pitchfork

• Pitchforking Actions

• Plain Sentence: I stood in the middle of the field. (What is the action in the sentence?

Now you try & pitchfork)

• Pitchfork: I stood in the middle of the field, stamping my feet and shivering in the cold,

waiting for something to happen.

Find the Pitchforking

• Most people think they know me, but they don’t even know the half of who I am

or what I have been through, or what I have done, seen, heard. The only people

who really know me and accept me for who I am are my boy and girl best friends,

my sister and my family. What you don’t know is I have been bullied, used, hated

and been invisible.

Pitchforking for ACTIONS

• Most people think they know me, but they don’t even know the half of who I am

or what I have been through, or what I have done, seen, heard. The only people

who really know me and accept me for who I am are my boy and girl best friends,

my sister and my family. What you don’t know is I have been bullied, used, hated

and been invisible.

Easiest Ways to Pitchfork

• Pitchforking Using BA-DA-BING

• BA-DA-BING is a sentence that tells what a person’s body is doing, what they saw, and

what they thought.

• Plain Sentence: This weekend I watched The Lego Movie for the third time. ( Now you

try pitchforking it.)

• Pitchforking: Seated at the center of the many rows of seats, munching popcorn, I

watched the familiar film designed almost entirely with Lego bricks. My brain was

satisfied because instead of violence, this movie was filled with orderly bricks.

• Does it matter if it is more than one sentence? Is good writing good writing????

Find the Pitchforking

• On a hospital bed you get up, go in the hallway and you see flashing lights,

papers scattered, doors closed or wide open, everything that gives you the

chills, but it seems familiar.

Pitchforking for BA-DA-BING

• On a hospital bed you get up, go in the hallway and you see flashing lights,

papers scattered, doors closed or wide open, everything that gives you the

chills, but it seems familiar. (Doing, Saw, Thought)

You can pitchfork ANYTHING!

These are just a FEW examples.

Bernabei, Gretchen. "Pitchforking." Grammar Keepers: Lessons That Tackle

Students' Most Persistent Problems Once and for All, Grades 4-12. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Lisa

Luedeke, 2015. Print