Writing a Complete Sentence: How to Make it Stick

Listen to the full episode to hear about how to make writing a complete sentence stick:

How many of your students still struggle with writing a complete sentence? I know I have experienced this in my classroom year after year. So what can you do to support your students? In today’s episode, I’m sharing 5 tips for writing a complete sentence. 

When our students enter our classrooms, they all come with different academic levels and prior knowledge. Although you might teach upper elementary, it cannot be assumed your students know the basics of complete sentences. With this alone, it’s important to make sure they have the foundational skills before they dive right in. 

At the beginning of the episode, I explain the 5 parts of a complete sentence and include how to set up sentence practice in your classroom. By knowing where your instructional time is going to take place, you can focus on how you want your students to practice.

Try focusing on simple and focused sentences with a visual representation. Students will appreciate and benefit from learning your process and understanding the 5 parts of a complete sentence through color and identification. 

We all know our day is busy and packed with so much information, so where are you going to fit this practice into your day? It’s first important to remember that this practice is supposed to be quick and focused, so the beauty is, you can sneak it in throughout the day! I share 5 ways you can embed these moments of sentence practice into your day. Providing opportunities for students to practice writing and identifying complete sentences is how they learn and retain the information. 

Sentences are the stepping stones for all future writing tasks, so it’s important to allow time for explanation, reasoning, and practice within your classroom. Remember, repetition is key when developing writing complete sentences. Sharing my 5 tips for writing a complete sentence will show how I have found success with teaching each part and ways I implement several opportunities for sentence writing practice in the classroom setting that you will be able to use in your own classroom.

In this episode on writing a complete sentence, I share:

• Why spiraling grammar practice is beneficial for all your students no matter when they were supposed to learn a skill
• How visual representation during sentence writing helps your students understand the process 
• Why to begin with teaching basic sentence structures; more complex sentences can be explored once your students display they are ready
• Easy-to-implement ideas and ways to create opportunities for your students
• Being intentional and allowing for plenty of practice each day

Resources Mentioned:

• Monthly Writing Prompts
• Punctuation Anchor Charts
• Guided Reading Sentence Stem Response Cards Bundle

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About The Literacy Dive Podcast:

Do you find yourself seeking new ideas when it comes to literacy instruction in elementary classrooms? The Literacy Dive Podcast was created to offer actionable steps and to share information for teachers, like you, who are always looking to improve their craft! ELA is our jam and we are excited to dive into all things reading and writing with you!

Your host, Megan Polk, is the creator and owner behind The Literacy Dive and loves to support students and their teachers with curriculum, literacy instruction, best practices, and engaging literacy activities.

Dive in with us every Monday for a new episode from Megan! She, and her guests, will chat about various literacy topics and will bring you tips and tricks that can easily be implemented in your classrooms. You can tune in wherever you get your podcasts! Listen to The Literacy Dive Podcast on platforms like Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, and more! If you find value from listening to this podcast, please rate this show, leave a review, and follow!