Sentence Writing Activities
Teaching young students how to put together sentences on paper is an important first step in developing their writing and communication skills. Sentence writing activities teach children how to formulate sentences to convey a thought while also educating them about the technicalities, such as ending a sentence with the proper punctuation and starting new sentences with capitalized letters. Activities should be fun so that students enjoy learning about sentence structure.
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Picture Card Simple Sentences
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For beginner activities, students must learn about using nouns and verbs to create a simple sentence. Prepare picture cards for your students to use as a prompt to create a sentence. Show everyone in the classroom the same picture at the same time. Then instruct students to write a simple sentence about the picture. For instance, if the picture card illustrated a girl jumping rope, an appropriate simple sentence for students to write is "the girl jumps rope," or something of equal simplicity. Ask your students to share some of the sentences they write. To give the activity a twist, instruct students to write one statement and one question for certain pictures that you show them.
Word Card Activity
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A word card activity uses word cards that kids put together in the correct order to create a sentence. On each card write one word, such as "the," "cat," "says" and "meow." Give each student a bag of cards that must put in order to create a sentence. When the first round is completed, instruct students to switch their bag of cards with their neighbor's and make a new sentence using the new cards. If you notice that some students are completing their sentences faster than others, give them more challenging sentences to construct.
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Not a Sentence
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Sentences convey complete thoughts or ideas, but nonsentences fall short of providing that complexity. This activity teaches kids how to recognize a complete sentence from a fragment. Prepare the activity by giving each student two index cards: one that says "sentence" and one that says "not a sentence." Read them a phrase out loud. When you are finished reading the phrase, students must decide on their own whether it was a sentence or a fragment and then raise their index card in the air. Go around the room and see which students answered correctly. Discuss why each phrase that you read is a sentence or why it isn't.
Fill in the Story
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Provide students with a one-page story that is missing words. If a holiday is approaching, tie the story to a theme of the holiday to make the story more interesting. Instruct students to read the story, and each time they see a blank line, they must fill it in with a word that they feel is most appropriate. Next to the blank lines you should have a word clue that tells students whether they must insert a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. When the students are done completing their stories, go around the room and read the story as a class. This gives students the chance to present one sentence from their story in front of peers.
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References
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