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.

Ask students to experiment with sentence length
Students write an extemely long sentence; then they practice writing short ones. This exercise helps students get away from the idea that sentences should be a specific length.

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.

Complete Sentences: Missing Verbs
In this worksheet students add verbs to form complete sentences. Designed for grades 1 and 2; Adobe Reader required.

Fix the Sentences
In this 1-page worksheet, students are given sentence fragments and run-ons to edit. Designed for 4th grade; Adobe Reader required.

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.

Kinds of Sentences by Function Practice
Students identify declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences. Examples, 10 practice sentences, and answers.

Make a New Sentence
Given an image to describe and words to use, students compose sentences. Designed for K-1; Adobe Reader required.

Noun Clause Practice
Explanation, examples, 10 practice sentences, and answers.

Objective Complements
In this online lesson, students learn to identify objective complements.

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.

Race Track Sentences
Students generate a sentence online and then use it in a longer piece of writing. Designed to accompany The Berenstain Bears and the Big Road Race but useful in many contexts.

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.

The Short Sentence as Gospel Truth
Using examples from Animal Farm and other sources, this blog examines the power of sentence variety, especially the short sentence.

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-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.

This Sentence Has Five Words
A classic statement on the value of variety in sentence length and structure. A good poster for the writing corner or a good handout for students.

Using Poetry to Teach the Subordinate Clause
This activity includes a model.

Why these are the 'Ten Best Sentences'
Good for high school and college writers, this article analyzes the structure of 10 sentences from literature that a poll considered "best."