Super Sentence Writing: Step-by-Step Mini-lessons for Primary Students

What is sentence writing? How do you teach writing a sentence to your primary students?

Hey there, teacher friend! Good questions. Read on for step-by-step mini-lessons you can use in your primary classroom to teach your students how to write a complete sentence!

Sentence Writing Mini-Lesson 1: What is a complete sentence? (Monday)

Now that your students are starting to write more, this is the time to teach writing a complete sentence.

Start by defining a complete sentence: A complete sentence is a group of words that expresses a complete thought. Complete sentences have a subject (who the sentence is about – noun) and a predicate (what the subject is doing – verb). Give examples for your student to identify whether the group of words is a complete sentence.

Make it fun: Stand up if it is a complete sentence, stay sitting, and stick out your tongue (or something similar) if the group of words is not a complete sentence.

• the girl
• The dog has fleas.
• Sally ran.
• dogs
• playground
• The nut fell from the tree.

This lesson would also make a great anchor chart. Write these sentences on a whiteboard or anchor chart for your students. Talk about the examples that are complete sentences. Circle the subject and underline the predicate. Then, talk about why the other examples are not sentences. Make these examples into complete sentences as a class, circle the subject, and underline the predicate.

Wrap it up by reviewing the subject and predicate.

I can help make these lessons even more manageable with my Complete Sentence Sentence-a-Day Resource. It includes all of the teaching slides and pictures for each day of the week so your students can practice writing complete sentences, plus a sentence-a-day writing paper for your students to write their sentences on! This super helpful resource also includes a writing rubric you can use with your students to assess their sentences!

Step 2: Write a complete sentence. (Tuesday)

Review yesterday’s sentence-writing lesson. What is a complete sentence? What is a subject? What is a predicate? This is also a great time to review nouns and verbs.

Model: Tell your students you will show them how to write a complete sentence. Choose a student to stand up. Write a complete sentence about that student: Billy is standing on the rug.

Have students help you circle the subject (Billy) and the predicate (is standing on the rug).

Then, have another student walk to the back of the room. Write a complete sentence together (where your students can see it. Sally walked to the back of the room. Have students help you circle the subject (Sally) and the predicate (walked to the back of the room).

Then, let students have a go! Show them a picture. Looking at the picture, what is the subject (the noun)—the girl? What is the girl doing (predicate—verb)? She is talking. Students will combine those two to write sentences, circle the subject, and underline the predicate. Have your students write their complete sentences on their sentence-a-day paper or in their writing notebooks. Have them circle the subject and underline the predicate. When students are done writing their sentences, you can either collect them and do a quick assessment of whether or not they understand or walk around while they write to do a quick evaluation.

Step 3: Practice complete sentence writing. (Wednesday and Thursday)

Review the writing lesson from the previous day each day. Have students get together with a partner to share the sentence they wrote yesterday and check each other’s work to see if they circled the subject and underlined the predicate.

Ask if anyone would like to share their sentence with the class. Write or project the student’s sentence so everyone can see and check the sentence together using a complete sentence writing rubric. What is the subject? Is it circled? What is the predicate? Is it underlined? Does the sentence begin with a capital letter? Does the sentence have a punctuation mark? (If you don’t want to use a student’s sentence as an example, write a sentence of your own. ) Check these off on the rubric and discuss what was done well and what needs to be done to improve the sentence.

Then, review your anchor chart or teaching slide and let the students write a complete sentence. Remind your students to use capitals and punctuation, circle the subject, and underline the predicate.

Step 4: Assess sentence writing. (Friday)

Review the previous day’s writing lesson. Discuss the sentences written this week. Then, show your students the rubric you will use to assess their sentences (the same one you used on Wednesday and Thursday). Students will get to choose what they will write their sentences about today. Display the rubric when your students are writing their sentences. Collect their papers when they are done (if you use my sentence-a-day resource, the writing rubric is already on the students’ writing page).

If anyone still has trouble, create a small writing group for those students. When you have time for small group work, you can work with these students on sentence writing.

My Complete Sentence: Sentence a Day Resource contains everything you need to teach your students to write complete sentences easily. Check it out!

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Happy Teaching,