Common Core Standards
Grade 5
Language L.5.3.A
Expand, combine, and reduce sentences for meaning, reader/listener interest, and style.
Here, students are asked to shoot their editing skills into the stratosphere by combining, reducing, and expanding sentences with a specific rhetorical purpose in mind. Your students aren't going to be dropping sentences like Nabokov by the end of the year, but they should be able to edit their work in a thoughtful, constructive fashion.