Five Engaging Lesson Plans for Teaching Sentence Structure Strategies
So, your elementary students 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. Which I'm going to show you one fun, engaging way to make learning sentences more fun. Keep on reading!
Let's start with the FIVE sentence structure strategies that you can teach during conferences or small group instruction. As your students practice these strategies with you, it will be important to give them strategy focused feedback on how they are doing with proper sentence structure.
Writing Strategy #1: Smart Writers choose the subject and predicate for every sentence.
You will want to teach them the difference between a subject and predicate.
A subject is the NAMING PART and tells WHO or WHAT is doing something. The subject can be a PERSON, PLACE, or THING that the sentence is about.
A predicate is the TELLING PART and tells what the subject is doing. It is the VERB and any other words that tell more about it. It can be one word or more than one word.
Writing strategy #2: Smart Writers use adjectives to make their sentence strong and descriptive.
First off, start by teaching what an adjective is.
It can describe a person, place, animal, thing, or thought. Adjectives include words that describe what something looks like and what it feels like to touch, taste, or smell. They can be colors or words that describe temperatures or sizes.
You can even tell you students to try and describe themselves. Are they tall, short, fast, interesting, smart, tired, or something else? Then, explain to them that these are all adjectives because they describe a person—YOU!
Writing strategy #3: Smart Writers add other details to make their sentence strong and descriptive.
What do I mean by other details? Your students can include: how? when? where? how often? and in what way something happened.
In other words they can include “ADVERBS” in their sentences.
And if they really want to be an All-Star Writer, they can add a group of words to explain the time and place that something happened.
Or, “PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES”.
Writing strategy #4: Smart Writers start every sentence with a capital.
First, teach your students the purpose of capital letters such as:
Capital letters help to tell your reader that a new sentence is starting. It's when you take a word, make a first letter uppercase, and leave the rest of the letters lowercase.
You can even apply this to your students name. Ask them do you know another place where you use a capital letter? YOUR NAME. The first letter in your name is capital too.
Writing strategy #5: Smart Writers add a punctuation mark at the end of every sentence.
Start with explaining the WHY behind punctuation marks. They tell your reader the sentence is done and a new sentence is about to begin.
You also want your reader to know if it's a telling sentence, question sentence, or an excited sentence. But without a punctuation mark, your reader won't know HOW to read it.
Should they be excited, sad, raise their voice, or just talk in a regular voice? Ending punctuation marks tell your reader exactly how to read the sentence.
Once you have lesson plans for teaching sentence structure, give your students a fun, hands-on activity to practice the new writing strategies.
When you are meeting with your students in a writing conference or small group, there are a few minutes of guided practice time. Right? This will be a great opportunity to pull out a really fun, hands-on activity that students can use to practice proper sentence structure strategies. Here is one of my favorite writing strategy activities I give my students during conferences or small group instruction. It's called…
The Sentence Discovery Resource Bundle includes: 5 lesson plans, Writing Strategy Activity, Anchor Chart, and Strategy Card.
Here's how the fun activity works:
Your students will lay out the word cards provided in this resource. First, they choose a subject and predicate. Then, they can add other details and adjectives to make the sentence strong and descriptive. Next, they add the correct ending punctuation card. And finally, they write the sentences they make on their recording sheet. (Includes: word cards, punctuation cards, and recording sheet)
Want this resource; click here!
If you are looking for even more writing strategies for mini lessons, conferences, or writing small groups; follow along on Facebook, swipe stories on Instagram, watch videos on YouTube, or hop into my Literacy Teacher Greatness Facebook Community.
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