How to write a sentence for kids
How to Teach Sentence Writing & Structure
Teaching Tips
October 22, 2020
0
8 mins
So, your student can write letters and is developing early literacy skills to read high-frequency words and sound out some new words. What comes next? Sentence writing, of course!
How exciting it is when children move from being able to express their ideas only by drawing pictures to writing sentences that everyone can read! Before we can help children learn to write a sentence, we first need to teach them what a sentence is! Then we need effective teaching strategies and good materials to make teaching and learning sentences fun.
What is a Sentence?
A sentence:
- is a group of words that expresses a complete thought that can stand alone (also called an independent clause)
- starts with a capital letter
- has spaces between each word
- ends with punctuation (period, question mark, or exclamation point)
- contains a subject (someone or something) and a predicate (what the someone or something is being or doing)
There are three main types of sentence structures:
- Simple Sentence: One independent clause with a subject and a predicate
- Ex: The dog wags her tail.
- Ex: The dog wags her tail.
- Compound Sentence: Two or more independent clauses joined together by a coordinating conjunction (i.e., and, but, for, or, nor, yet, so)
- Ex: I open the door, and the dog wags her tail.
- Complex Sentence: Contains at least one independent clause and one dependent clause
A dependent clause is a group of words with a subject and verb that expresses a complete thought, so it cannot stand alone (e.g., “when I get home”).- Ex: The dog wags her tail when I get home
How to Teach Sentence Structure
Want your students to have success with writing sentences? The formula is simple!
Active Teaching + Good Materials = Writing Success.
Let’s first look at Active Teaching.
Three Instructional Stages for Teaching SuccessfullyThere is an important, three-step process that sets children up for success when learning.
This process can not only be used when teaching sentence structure but also for handwriting instruction and so many other skills!
- The first stage is Direct Instruction. During this stage, you directly instruct by actively demonstrating how to write a sentence. To get all eyes on you as you demonstrate, say, “My Turn! Watch me write the sentence.” Explain the important concepts as you write such as capitalization, spacing, and punctuation. Then say, “Your Turn,” indicating it’s their turn to imitate you in their workbook, worksheet, or lined paper. This step assures students are watching and learning how to write correctly, which is a foundation piece for good habits.
- The next stage is Guided Practice. This requires that teachers guide students to their workbook or worksheet where they copy sentences from a model. While students write, teachers should walk around and closely monitor and guide their students. Resist the temptation to let workbook and worksheet practice be independent work as they can copy incorrectly and reinforce bad habits.
Students need direct instruction prior to and continued guidance during this stage so they practice correctly. - The final stage is Independent Practice. This happens when children write sentences on their own without a visual model, and it is an important part of your lesson to help students develop independence with writing sentences. Provide lined paper or journals for this stage.
Make Teaching Sentences Fun!
Research tells us that multisensory teaching is the best way to teach children so that we appeal to each child’s learning style. It’s also part of active teaching! Add one or more of these multisensory ideas to your sentence structure lessons to get children excited and engaged in the lesson!
Sentence School
Sentence School is a kindergarten level program offered from Learning Without Tears designed to reinforce good handwriting habits as you teach students to form sentences and become confident writers.
It works alongside any language arts program and takes only 10-15 minutes per day. Daily lessons in the included teacher's guide promote vocabulary and sentence skills with word cards and common classroom objects. Each lesson plan includes an active, hands-on activity to help children learn the words and formulate sentences with what they see and experience in the activity.
Mixed-Up Sentences
Write the subject on one popsicle stick and the predicate on another for several sentences. Talk with your students about the two parts of a sentence and then let them mix them up to make silly mixed-up sentences!
Sentence Song
The Sentence Song is on the Rock, Rap, Tap, and Learn Music album from LWT. It is sung to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" and helps children learn about capitalization, spacing between words, and punctuation in a fun way!
Spacing Strategies
One of the challenges children face when starting to write sentences is spacing! We don’t use spaces when we speak, so the concept of spacing isn’t natural for children.
There are many creative ways to help children learn to space their words. Here are a few:
- Nothing Bottle: What is a space? It’s “nothing,” right? Take a large, empty plastic bottle or pitcher, and write the word “nothing” across it. Before writing time, ask students to hold out their hands and pour some “nothing” into them. Instruct them to use a little “nothing” after every word as they write!
- Sick Sentence Clinic: Write a sentence on the board or with the A+ Worksheet Maker without any spaces between the words. Discuss with students why that sentence is difficult to read and explain that it is a “sick sentence”. Tell them they are going to be “sentence doctors” and make that sentence healthy again! Give them lined paper to re-write the sentence with good spacing.
- Spaghetti and Meatballs: Explain that there should be no more than a spaghetti-sized space between letters inside words, and we need a meatball-sized space between words! Give students a large cotton ball and a piece of string to use as their “spaghetti and meatball” to measure spaces as they write.
What Else Do You Need to Help Children Write Sentences Effectively?
You need Good Materials! Teachers need good materials to demonstrate sentences and students need well-designed materials to practice on. The products below will promote success for you as a teacher and for your students as they are developing their writing skills.
For Teachers
- Worksheet Maker Lite: This free and easy-to-use resource lets you create worksheets for students using the LWT double lines. There are worksheet templates for grades K-4 in both print and cursive with grade-appropriate lines and spacing. Templates include spelling, vocabulary, sentence writing, and graphic organizers.
- Double Line Writer: To help with demonstrating sentences on your board, insert two markers in the holes of this handy tool to easily draw straight double lines on chalkboards or dry erase boards.
- Double Line Sentence Strips: These 24”x3” strips are great for modeling sentences and come in a pack of 100.
You might want to keep one on your bulletin board with a sample sentence as an example for students to reference! - Double Line Chart Tablet: These 24”x32” tablets can be used with your easel to demonstrate sentences for students.
For Students
- Grade Level Handwriting Workbook: Handwriting Without Tears workbooks teach letters and numbers and include page after page of writing activities to practice sentence writing and handwriting skills.
- Building Writers: This program includes grade-level workbooks for grades K-5 for children to practice and build core writing skills. It offers a scaffolded approach to develop proficiency with writing narrative, information, and opinion pieces.
- Double Line Paper: Children need extra paper for writing practice. Double Line Notebook Paper comes in packs of 100 or 500 sheets in wide, regular, or narrow width.
- Curious about double lines and why they work? Double lines control children’s letter size, spacing, and placement, which promotes legible writing that is easily transferred to other styles of paper. Watch this video to learn more:
- Big Sheet Draw & Write Paper: These 11”x17” sheets are perfect for students to have space for drawing and writing sentences about their drawing! They come in a pack of 100 double-sided sheets.
- Writing Journal: The LWT grade-level journals provide grade-appropriate double lines for students to use during independent writing time.
- Keyboarding Without Tears: Sentence writing doesn’t just happen on paper! Now more than ever it is crucial that elementary students practice composing sentences and paragraphs in digital form.
The KWT curriculum includes fun, grade-appropriate lessons for children to develop automatic keyboarding skills.
Assessment
Don’t forget about assessment! We need a way to assess children’s writing skills and track progress. The LWT Screener of Handwriting Proficiency is a free, easy-to-administer, whole class assessment that helps educators and specialists assess critical and measurable skills that children need for success including the sentence components of capitalization, spacing, and punctuation.
Sentence Writing is Fun with Learning Without Tears!
With these teaching tips and good materials, you can help children achieve sentence writing success! Don’t forget that handwriting is a foundational skill that should be taught prior to and alongside sentence structure! For more information about the products mentioned above and more ways to support children learning handwriting skills, explore LWTears.com.
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Teaching Kids How to Write Super Sentences
How do you encourage your students to write longer, more interesting sentences? You know what will happen if you simply ask them to write longer sentences… they’ll just add more words to the end, resulting in long, rambling run-ons!
After struggling with this problem myself, I developed a method that helped my students learn how to turn boring sentences into super sentences.
I began by teaching them the difference between fragments, run-ons, and complete sentences. Then we practiced revising and expanding basic sentences to make them more interesting. After I modeled the activity and they practiced it in a whole group setting, they played a game called Sentence Go Round in their cooperative learning teams. The difference in their writing was dramatic! Before long, they were adding more detail to their sentences without creating run-ons in the process.
Step 1: Mini-Lesson on Sentences, Fragments, and Run-ons
Begin by explaining that complete sentences can be short or long, but they must have two basic parts, a subject and a predicate. The subject tells who or what the sentence is about, and the predicate is the action part of the sentence, or the part that tells what the subject is doing. If it’s missing one of those parts, it’s a fragment. If it has a whole string of sentences that run on and on without proper punctuation, it’s a run-on sentence.
Next display a series of phrases or sentences and ask your students to decide if each on is a fragment, a complete sentence, or a run-on. Try these:
- Rabbits hop. (Your students will say it’s a fragment since it’s so short, but it’s actually a complete sentence.)
- The big brown fluffy rabbit in the garden. (Looks like a sentence, but it’s missing a predicate.)
- Rabbits love to eat carrots and one hopped into our garden and I thought it was cute even though it was eating the carrots. (A run-on of course … kids don’t usually have trouble spotting these, but you might want to have them find all the subjects and predicates to make your point.)
- The hungry rabbit hopped into the garden because he wanted to eat a carrot. (Even though this one is long, it’s not a run-on because it only had one subject and one predicate.)
Step 2: Mini-Lesson on Revising & Expanding Sentences
After your students can distinguish between fragments, run-ons, and complete sentences, it’s time for them to practice their sentence-writing skills by learning how to revise and expand basic sentences.
This activity should be modeled in a whole group or guided literacy group first, and older children can do the activity later in cooperative learning teams. To start the activity, you need a set of task cards with basic sentences that lack detail. I used an example from the Fall Sentences to Expand freebie for this lesson, but you can use task cards from any of the seasonal freebies below.
Whole Class Modeling:
- Start by selecting a basic sentence from the Fall, Winter, Spring, or Summer task cards above. Let’s use the fall-themed sentence, “She picked apples.” Write the sentence on the board or show it to the class using a document camera.
- Explain that “She picked apples” is boring, but if we ask ourselves questions about it, we can add details that answer the question and make it more interesting. For example, if we ask “Who picked apples?” we can name someone specific. Demonstrate how to make the change as shown below.
- It’s still a boring sentence, so let’s ask, “How many?” and say that Mary picked a dozen apples.
- Go through the same process, each time repeating the revised sentence and asking another question. After 4 rounds of changes, it might look like the one in step 4 below.
Whole Class Interactive Lesson:
- Next, repeat the process and actively involve your students. Ask one student to randomly select a sentence card and write it on the board.
- Then ask all students to think about a question they could ask and how they could revise the sentence to add one detail. It can be more than one word, but it shouldn’t be more than a short phrase that answers that question. If all students have individual dry erase boards or chalkboards, ask them to write down their revisions and show them to you.
- Call on one student to come forward and display his or her revised sentence.
- Repeat the process three or four more times until you’ve created a sentence that’s detailed and interesting, but not a run-on.
Modification Idea: If you notice that some students are creating run-on sentences, ask everyone to pair with a partner before sharing with the class to make sure all sentences are complete sentences.
Step 3: Cooperative Learning Writing Activity
The first two steps are the perfect segue into Sentence Go Round, an activity for cooperative learning teams or small groups to practice expanding sentences. The product below includes sample sentences for the teacher to display, as well as printables for students and a sorting activity to practice identifying fragments, run-ons, and complete sentences. Sentence Go Round also includes activity directions and question cards to prompt students as they are creating their new sentences. To preview the entire resource, click over to see Sentence Go Round in my TpT store.
Step 4: Google Classroom Sentence Writing Practice
It’s important to follow up with independent practice, so I’ve created some Google Classroom resources to supplement the cooperative learning, hands-on activities in Sentence Go Round. Sensational Sentences: Sentence Writing Practice includes a Google slide presentation to introduce the concepts, 2 digital sentence sorting activities, 2 self-checking Google Quizzes, 2 sentence writing activities, and 3 editable templates.
If you want to use the cooperative learning activity Sentence Go Round AND the Google Classrooms materials, check out my Sensational Sensational Sentences Bundle which includes both resources at a discounted price.
I hope your students enjoy these lessons and Sentence Go Round as much as mine did, and that they will soon be writing super sentences instead of boring ones!
Help the child to make a sentence
The formation of oral and written speech is one of the most important tasks of such a school subject as "Russian language". Despite the high demands of the school curriculum and special lessons aimed at developing the speech reserve, for many schoolchildren this task remains impossible. Not only is the speech of students devoid of expressiveness, it is also overloaded with stylistic errors. Unfortunately, not only junior schoolchildren demonstrate non-compliance with literary and spelling standards. To compose a sentence that is built logically correctly, you have to make some mental efforts even for individual high school students.
The improvement and development of speech skills accompanies the educational process from the initial stage of elementary school education. Already in the preparatory class, the child learns to build sentences in semantic order, retell texts and write descriptions for pictures. Children find it difficult to complete such tasks. To help them do this, you can offer to make a sentence from the words written on the board. Words should be scattered, but carry a certain semantic load, allowing you to make a sentence on a given topic. In the same way, you can teach a child to build a series of sentences that make up a short story. Having mastered such skills, the child will first learn to use simple sentences. Subsequently, in high school, it will not be a difficult task for him to compose a complex sentence.
Language skills are not limited to the ability to express thoughts in writing. Some students, while easily coping with written creative work, can hardly compose a sentence orally.
To avoid this, it is necessary to instill in the child the necessary skills even in the preschool period: coherent speech, thinking, the ability to describe and tell. This will help special educational games.
Games for the development of oral speech
Broken phone
In this game, several participants whisper a word into each other's ear, which the next player distorts. The child understands that the last word in the chain is significantly different from the original and comprehends the importance of correct pronunciation.
Confusion
The facilitator offers to read a sentence where all the words are confused by an unexpected hurricane. The child must make up a sentence by rearranging the words. You can suggest carefully considering two sentences in which words are borrowed from each other.
Edible - inedible
One of the players throws the ball, naming an object. If the item is edible, the second player catches it; if not, they skip it.
And the last thing: the child builds his speech based on what he understands. Therefore, it is very important to teach the child to comprehend what he reads. Reading aloud is very important. Moreover, this process should not turn into an exercise. Try to interest the child. Invite your child to arrange a kind of literary evening. Passing on the role of an interesting storyteller to each other, read and retell entertaining stories, fairy tales and stories. This will not only help improve oral speech skills, but also establish an invisible connecting thread of warmth, trust and understanding between parents and children.
Lesson 5. Teach children to make three-word sentences
Topic . Sentence.
Target . Teach children to make three-word sentences.
Equipment . Subject and plot pictures.
Lesson progress .
Contents
- I. Organizational moment.
- II. Repetition of the material from the previous lesson.
- III. Work with sentences consisting of three words.
- IV. Summary of the lesson.
I. Organizational moment.
The speech therapist invites students to come up with a two-word sentence and put a question for each word.
II. Repetition of the material from the previous lesson.
The speech therapist puts pictures on the board, depicting objects in action, and asks students to make two-word sentences from the pictures. Draw a diagram of sentences in notebooks. Count the number of offers received.
III. Work with sentences consisting of three words.
Speech therapist. We worked with sentences that consisted of only two words. But a sentence can have three, four, five or more words. Today we will learn how to make three word sentences.
Speech therapist invites students to look at the picture, make a two-word sentence based on it.
(A picture is displayed on the board, which shows a girl carrying a rose.) (Girl carries.)
Then asks questions:
– Who is this? (Girl.)
- What is the girl doing? (Carries.)
- What is the girl carrying? (A rose.)
A three-word sentence is pronounced: A girl is carrying a rose.
Speech therapist. What word is added to the sentence? (Rose.) How many words were there in the sentence? (Three words.) We can conclude that the more words in a sentence, the more we learn.
The speech therapist puts the picture on the board again, which shows a woman reading a book, offers to look at the picture and answer the questions:
– Who is reading? (Mom.)
- What does mom do? (Reads.)
- What does mother read? (The book.)
The sentence is pronounced in full: Mom is reading a book.
The speech therapist asks the students to name the words in order.
Then - only the first and last word. Two or three more pictures are being considered. The work is built in a similar way.
Speech therapist gives assignments to students:
1) Look at the pictures. (Two subject pictures are put on the board, for example: a girl and a dragonfly or a boy and a beetle.)
Make a sentence from the pictures, choosing a word denoting the action yourself. Count the number of words in the sentence. State the first and last word.
Sample : A girl caught a dragonfly. The girl drew a dragonfly. The girl saw a dragonfly. Etc.
2) A picture depicting an object in action is displayed on the board, for example: a dog chews a bone. The speech therapist invites students to look at the picture and make a three-word sentence based on it. Then say the first and last word.
3) Look at the pictures and make three-word sentences based on them. (Each student receives one story picture.)
Then the students take turns saying their sentences.
