Do I really need to teach sentences?
Sentences are the Building Blocks to Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension is accomplished through the construction of a mental model, or mental representation of a text’s meaning in our brain. The mental model itself is complicated because there are many components and factors that contribute to a mental model in a fluid way. Students must be able to:
read the surface code, or literal words and sentences, of the text. This is where word recognition and decoding are essential.
make inferences to determine the text base, or the meaning behind the words. These underlying means are often abstract and not explicitly stated by the author.
pull background knowledge from their long-term memory to help them make sense of what they’re reading.
hold ideas in their working memory as they make inferences and connections and pull everything all together.
This mental model is built one sentence at a time while students read. The importance of sentence-level work in the classroom cannot be overlooked. In this blog post, I will outline aspects of sentence-level work that should be a part of any elementary classroom and share some teaching ideas for sentence-level work.
In addition to the specific teaching suggestions included below, this sentence-level information can also help inform how you will approach a text during a comprehension lesson. As the teacher, you need to analyze the complexity of the sentences in the text you want students to read or have read to them. You might want to consider previewing difficult sentences before reading, stopping to paraphrase or discuss specific sentences while reading, and/or pulling out specific sentences to analyze after reading.
Teach the Parts of Sentences
A complete sentence is made up of a subject and a predicate. For children, however, those terms can be really abstract. Instead, teach young children about the function of these parts. The subject is the part of a sentence that tells us who or what the sentence is about. The predicate is the part of a sentence that tells us the action, or what the subject is doing, thinking, or feeling.
Teaching Ideas:
Match subjects & predicates to form complete sentences.
Finish sentence stems with the missing subject or predicate.
Identify the parts in given sentences.
Use sentence builder charts.
Use word & phrase cards to help students physically manipulate the words in sentences.
Have students unscramble mixed up sentences.
Ask which words in a sentence tell who or what and which words tell the action.
Sort sentences vs. sentence fragments.
Have students write complete sentences.
Have students break a run-on sentence into smaller sentences.
Teach Sentence Types
There are four sentence types. We can classify sentences as statements, commands, exclamations, or questions. These types of sentences have a specific purpose and punctuation. They are also easier for students to understand and work with once they know the two parts of any sentence.
Teaching Ideas:
Add ending punctuation to sentences.
Sort different types of sentences.
Use word & phrase cards to help students physically manipulate the words in different types of sentences.
Have students write different examples of each type.
Review many of the practice ideas from above but with various sentence types.
Teach Sentence Structure
Sentences can also be classified as simple, compound, or complex. Simple sentences are very straightforward and easy to teach to students. Compound and complex sentences are more complicated and can be challenging for students to understand. Lots of practice modeling, discussing, and writing different sentences will help student internalize these structures.
Teaching Ideas:
Complete sentence stems with the missing independent or dependent clause.
Circle the conjunction in compound and complex sentences.
Fill in the missing conjunction in compound and complex sentences.
Expand simple sentences into compound or complex sentences.
Combine two simple sentences into a compound sentence, choosing the appropriate conjunction.
Combine an independent and dependent clause into a complex sentence, choosing the appropriate conjunction.
Have students write their own simple, compound, and complex sentences.
Teach Parts of Speech
You can teach about sentences without mentioning specific parts of speech but eventually students will need to know them. I would encourage you to start by examining a word’s function in a sentence and then assign a name to that part of speech. For example, when introducing a complete sentence, students can identify the who or what the sentence is about. After successfully doing that, the teacher can explain that the who or what in a sentence is a noun. You can build knowledge of parts of speech within your sentence-level work. When students see the specific names of different parts of speech in the context of sentence, they will be more meaningful to students. And as students explore more advance sentences, they’ll be ready to learn more advance terms like conjunction and preposition.
Teaching Ideas:
Label parts of speech within different types of sentences.
Help students generate sentences that include certain parts of speech.
Discuss the relationship between different parts of speech. For example, talk about how adjectives describe nouns and pronouns or model how pronouns can replace a noun.
Teach Cohesive Devices
If you are like me, the term cohesive device is a newer one. Cohesive devices refer to links between words and sentences that help connect information and help the whole text make sense together. There are four types of cohesive devices: pronoun reference, word & phrase substitution, ellipsis, and conjunctions.
Pronoun reference is when a pronoun is used to refer to something that has already been named in the text. For students, it can be hard to store the original noun in working memory and they may not realize to whom the pronoun refers. Also, it may be ambiguous who the pronoun is even referring to, depending on the complexity of the sentence.
Word & phrase substitution refers to renaming a word or phrase that has already been mentioned with something other than a pronoun. For example, you might refer to a party as a celebration, an event, or a get-together at different points in the text. This makes writing more interesting but can also be confusing for students with limited vocabulary.
An ellipsis is when part of the sentence needs to be inferred by the reader because it refers to something already mentioned. An example would be, “I went to the pet store to look at the dogs. I didn’t find any.” The reader has to know that ‘any’ really means ‘any dogs’.
And finally, conjunctions signal relationships between parts of a sentence. They can indicate sequence, cause & effect, and conditionality, for example. The reader needs to understand the relationship that is indicated by a certain conjunction.
Teaching Ideas:
Circle pronouns and draw arrows to the noun they are replacing.
Circle vocabulary words or phrases that refer to the same thing (word & phrase substitution).
Have students finish sentences that refer to ellipsis.
Circle conjunctions and discuss the relationship they show between parts of a sentence.
Practice writing sentences that use conjunctions.
Look for these kind of cohesive devices before teaching a text so you can prepare and coach students.
A Final Teaching Suggestion
Your sentence-level instruction does not need to be its own separate time of the day. It doesn’t even need to be within your writing block. Weave this sentence level work into other subjects throughout the day and use your academic content as fuel for your sentences. You can practice all of these sentence level skills to help students deepen their comprehension of topics in reading, science, and social studies. To learn more about teaching this way, I highly recommend The Writing Revolution by Judith Hochman and Natalie Wexler.
There is magic to be found in sentence-level work in an elementary classroom. I hope you have found some sentence magic to take with you back to your own classroom!
Sources:
Moats, L. C., & Tolman, C. A. (2019). LETRS (3rd ed., Vol. 1). Voyager Sopris.
