Repairing Run-On Sentences

One of my goals for next year is to help my students really strengthen their sentence control. Many teachers feel daunted by this, so it's no wonder the confusion trickles down to the kids! Understandably, it's hard to keep it all straight: simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, fragments, comma splices, run-ons, etc. On top of that, our budding writers are expected to vary their sentences throughout a written piece! It's like the never-ending writing skill, but it's vital in fourth grade and in life. One thing I can do over the summer (that I actually enjoy) is beef up my collection of resources. I'm thrilled with these task cards I created today:

 CLICK HERE to download the set from TpT!

Rather than relying on multiple choice answers, this exercise enables students to:

1. Identify if the sentence is truly a run-on sentence.

2. Rewrite run-on sentences in a variety of ways.

It will take lots of front loading (reviewing parts of speech, reteaching subject and predicate, etc.) to give my students the foundation they need before tackling those tricky run-on sentences. Modeling sentence writing, explicitly teaching the compound sentence pattern, and showing them a variety of mentor sentences helped my most recent group of fourth graders. Other tips include encouraging students to read their sentences aloud and revising drafts as they go (rather than finishing an entire draft before rereading it.) 

How do you teach your students to develop sentence control? Please spread your knowledge and leave a comment!

Sentences vs. Fragments

It's time to dust off the old blog and freshen it up with some new resources! As I've probably mentioned in previous posts, one of the expectations I hold my students accountable for throughout the year is writing in complete sentences. As intermediate elementary teachers, this is something we are all capable of doing; regardless of our content areas. Through mini-lessons or modeled writing, I'm always showing my students that complete sentences must have a subject and predicate. I also try to find opportunities to show them,

"Don't let the LENGTH of a sentence fool you! A complete sentence can be just two words long!"

This can be tricky for them to retain, but it's vital knowledge. I created some task cards to help me reinforce complete sentence skills to my students.

Download it here from my TpT Store!

In the fall, I'll use these after reviewing "subject + predicate = complete sentence," but before introducing compound sentences. Since I'll also be teaching science this school year, the content of the task cards is weather-related! Horay for cross-curricular resources!

Happy summer and WRITE ON!

Parts of Speech Sort

Are you ready to go back to school? I'm starting to get antsy at home, but I am not ready to give up sleeping in! I'm not even going to tell you what time I woke up this afternoon morning. The most important grammar objective that I want my fourth graders to master at the beginning of each year is forming complete sentences. Later in the year when they're still having trouble differentiating complete sentence vs. fragment, I always kick myself for not spending enough time at the beginning reviewing basic parts of speech. (You have to know nouns and verbs to understand subject and predicate!)

I found this great sorting idea on Pinterest about a year ago, originally pinned from education.com...

I thought it'd be fun to make some back-to-school themed sorting cards for this paper bag activity. I included 54 words comprised of various nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I hope to do this with small groups during the chaotic first week of school! Check it out:

Click HERE to download all 54 cards!

If you have the pleasure of teaching these same objectives, don't forget about my Subject & Predicate FREEBIE! It's ready to print and go. I am thrilled to have almost 200 followers. It might be time for another freebie pretty soon! Any requests? 

Subject & Predicate Freebie!

It's only the second week of school, and I'm already starting to do the "juggling act!" There is so much introductory content to cover in such a short period of time. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir! While I'm spending the majority of our class time on the writing process (as promised!) we're also working on complete sentence mini-lessons.

 

The major concept that I'm trying to stress right now is that complete sentences can be long or short, but they must have a subject and predicate! This is the anchor chart I've used for the past couple years:

 

 

Fortunately, my students came to me with awesome prior knowledge of nouns and verbs. After defining subject and predicate/how they relate to nouns and verbs, I wrote the following sentence:

Dogs bark.

I asked, "Is this a complete sentence?" All four class periods reacted the same exact way; which almost never happens! I heard "No!" coming from all sides of the room, but after some wait time and a slight grin from me, "No!" quickly turned to "Yes!" As I underlined "dog" with red and boxed "bark" with green, it started to sink in. This sentence was great proof that a short sentence does not have to mean an incomplete sentence. If it has a subject and predicate, it's complete!

Kids commonly struggle with finding the subject and predicate of a sentence, so I made a FREEBIE printable for all you hardworking writing teachers out there! Keep fighting the good fight. They will get it, and it will help them for years to come!

 

 

 

Click here to download the FREE PDF from my TpT Store!