Writing Resources

Our Sentence Structure Activities are great fun and NO PREP! Just print and go! Your kids will love working on completing sentences, and sorting complete and incomplete sentences with these themed printables Perfect activities are suitable for ESL, preschoolers, Kindergarten and first-grade learners! So much FUN!

There’s so much to teach when teaching kids about the basic types and structure of sentences.

The main goal is to teach them everything they need to know so that they can decide which type of sentence to use when writing and creating different text types. 

You will need a range of printables and teaching resources for your kids. Make sure that you have Sentence Structure activities that focus on helping your students:

1. Understand different types of sentences
2. Know how sentences are constructed
3. Can manipulate sentences for specific effects

Teaching Different Types Of Sentences

There are four basic types of sentence structure that your kids need to learn:

1. Statement Sentences -declare or state something.”The cat sat on the roof.”
2. Question Sentences – enquire, request or gain more information. “Is it hometime?”
3. Command Questions -directs or give orders. “Sit quietly please.”
4. Exclamation Sentences – express feelings and emotions. “How exciting!”

Kids need lots of opportunities to read, write and identify these types of sentences. Help them develop sentence structure understanding through stand alone activities, guided reading & writing and oral language discussions. 

Teaching Sentence Construction

1. A sentence is a group of words that are put together using words and letters, to mean something. It starts with a capital letter and ends with some form of punctuation.

Sentences have two parts, a subject and a predicate.

• The subject tells us what the sentence is about and can be words or phrases.
• The predicate contains a verb and tells us something about the subject.
• Sentences are made of clauses, independent or dependent & independent together. The number of clauses in a sentence helps identify the sentence structure.

There are 3 main types of sentence structure to teach your students:

1. Simple Sentences – one independent clause “We went to the shops.”
2. Compound Sentences – two or more independent clauses. Each clause must make sense on its own. “We went to the shops. We bought vegetables.”
3. Complex Sentences – contain at least one independent clause and one dependent clause. ” On Saturday we went to the shops and bought vegetables.”

Teaching kids about Voice, is also part of teaching sentence structure. Voice can be:

• Active – the subject performs the action, “Jo kicked the football.”
• Passive – The action is performed on the subject, “The football was kicked by Jo.”

Teaching Sentence Manipulation

After students have got the basics of sentence structure you can extend them by teaching them about sentence manipulation.

Sentence manipulation includes:

• Combining or Joining sentences using conjunctions or commas to create complex sentences.
• Expanding Sentences by using more words to add details.
• Reducing Sentences that don’t ramble on, or contain irrelevant details.
• Transforming Sentences by rewriting them to make the meaning clearer.
• Using Paragraphs to create coherent texts.