Sentence Builder

  1. Click on the script below to see it in snap
    lists of nouns, verbs, etc.
    Customize the lists by adding your own nouns, verbs, and so on.
Import Tools

The join words block adds a space between its inputs, like this: join words(the elephant climbs)
In the dialogue below, Alphie and Betty try to use the lists of words to build interesting sentences.

Alphie: "the elephant climbs" is just one specific example. Let's build a sentence that joins any article, noun, and verb.
Betty: Like this?
Betty makes: join words(articles, nouns, verbs)
Alphie: Looks good to me. Click it. What happens?
Betty clicks and they see all articles nouns verbs joined
Betty: Wha...? Oh, these are all the words in the lists. How do we get just one item from each list?
The phrases won't make sense necessarily. For example, noun phrase might generate "a sleepy pizza".
  1. Fix Alphie and Betty's script.
  2. In this problem, you will make a sentence-builder that makes complicated sentences like "the little elephant runs excitedly around the big pizza". To do this, use abstraction:
    1. First, use your words to make phrases. Make three reporters green noun phrase reporter block green prepositional phrase reporter block and green verb phrase reporter block. Here are some sample outputs:
        We might need some support here for ELLs. --MF
      • noun phrase: "the little boy" "a green giraffe"
        • You can use abstraction within this block. A prepositional phrase is a preposition plus a ...
      • prepositional phrase: "near the little boy" "in a wise pizza"
      • verb phrase: "jumps sadly" "naps quickly"
    2. Then, make a reporter green sentence reporter block that joins these phrases.
  3. Talk with Your PartnerExplain to your partner how this sentence-builder demonstrates abstraction.
  1. Create an even-more-complicated sentence-builder. Some ideas to try:
    • Randomly vary the order of the phrases (but only in ways that make grammatical sentences)
    • Occasionally include people's names instead of article-adjective-noun phrases
    • Pandomly vary the number of adjectives that appear in a phrase