Sentence Structure Lesson Plans
The ABCs of the Three Little Pigs
Students will demonstrate an understanding of varied sentence patterns by retelling the fairy tale "The Three Little Pigs" in twenty-six sentences. This lesson is designed for grades 6-8 and includes support materials.
Adjective Clause Practice
Explanation, 10 practice sentences, and answers.
Adverb Clause Practice
Explanation, examples, 10 practice sentences, and answers.
Antonyms and Comma Splices
For Dickens' opening to his Tale of Two Cities, the author uses one of the longest series of comma splices in the history of literature. While Dickens did this for stylistic effect, student writers often overuse comma splices in reckless ways, with little knowledge of the conjunctions that can be put between two independent ideas. For this assignment, students create their own Dickens-like paragraph, but they are required to find (and punctuate for properly) appropriate conjunctions to sit between their opposites.
Appositive Action
Students will learn to combine 2 or more descriptive sentences and action sentences into one sentence with an appositive phrase. This lesson includes support materials and is designed for grades 3-5.
Clause Types Recognition Practice and Clause Types and Uses Practice
Explanation, examples, and practice identifying main/independent and subordinate/dependent clauses. Answers available on the site.
Compound Subjects
Interactive practice identifying compound subjects. Follow links on the left to another exercise.
Compound Verbs
Interactive practice identifying compound verbs. Follow links on the left to 2 more exercises.
Grammar Goes Green?
In this lesson, students review what qualifies as a grammatically complete sentence. They then use a Times article about the movie, Hulk, to help them identify interesting and challenging nouns and verbs that they can later mix and match to form new sentences.
Identifying Different Kinds of Sentences — The Peacock's Feathers
Students watch a 1-minute video segment about peacocks. Then they use a chart to identify sentence types within a short paragraph, and they complete a sentence transformation worksheet.
Improving your sentence structure
Printable handout with types of sentences, types of sentence errors, and examples. Adobe Reader required for access; 4 pages.
Kinds of Sentences by Function Practice
Students identify declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences. Examples, 10 practice sentences, and answers.
Noun Clause Practice
Explanation, examples, 10 practice sentences, and answers.
Objective Complements
In this online lesson, students learn to identify objective complements.
Pardon Me, Your Modifier is Dangling: A Creative Way to Teach Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers
Students understand, correct, and illustrate misplaced and dangling modifiers. This lesson includes sentences for practice.
Plague Words and Phrases
A list of words and phrases writers should avoid like the plague, and an explanation for each.
Poems of Condition
In Rudyard Kipling’s poem "If," the author strings together several adverb clauses in order to tell the reader what he or she needs to do to grow up and become "a Man, my son!" While describing all the conditions that need to be met, Kipling finds a balance between contrasting character traits. Students will practice writing poems using the conditional "if" clause while guiding the reader on how to be a certain person.
A Poetry lesson to teach the Subordinate Clause
Students write poetry using a model that emphasizes subordinate clauses. Adaptable to other parts of speech, too.
Presentations in Powerpoint format
A set of teacher-created slide presentations on sentence structure for classroom use.
Review: Sentence Structure
This interactive activity asks students to identify the type of sentence.
Sentence Clubhouse
In this online activity students review types of sentences. They also practice capital letters and punctuation.
Sentence Fragments
Lesson plans on sentence fragments for everyone from elementary to college students.
Sentence Patterns for Sentence Variety
Printable handout with 9 patterns and examples. Two pages; Adobe Reader required for access.
Stop that Run-on!
Students will learn to identify run-on sentences and how to fix them. They will then apply those skills to their own writing. This lesson is designed for grades 2-4.
Subject Identification
Interactive practice identifying single-word subjects in simple sentences. Follow links on the left to six additional exercises.
Subject-Verb Recognition Practice #1 and Practice #2
Definition, examples, and 10 practice sentences. Practice 1 deals with sentences in natural order. Practice 2 deals with natural and inverted order. Both pages include answers.
Using Poetry to Teach the Subordinate Clause
This activity includes a model.
