How-to-make-writing-easy-for-kids: What-is-a-sentence?

Sentences

How to make writing easy for your kids – what is a sentence?

Why do we have sentences?

Primary sentences are there for the reader. It shows the reader where to pause to make sense of the words. E.g. ‘We’re ready to eat Grandma’ compared with ‘We’re ready to eat, Grandma’ or ‘The ship was made of grey metal sheep ran across the deck’ compared with’The ship was made of grey metal. Sheep ran across the deck.’

What does a sentence need?

A sentence needs a verb and a subject.

A verb is a ‘doing’ word – such as hit, fell, talked, walked, thinks.

The subject is the person or thing doing the verb, for example Miss Jones talked to her class, Johnny ran in the hall. Miss Jones is doing the talking; Johnny is doing the running.

A deterniner goes in front of the noun – a dog, these dogs, some dogs.

What punctuation do we need in a sentence?

A sentence needs to start with a capital letter and end with a full stop (.), a question mark (?) or exclamation mark (!)

What else does a sentence need to do?

It needs to make sense. This might seem really obvious to us as adults, but for young children this can be a challenge to get them to understand if a sentence is complete is is simply a fragment which needs more information.

We’ll look at other aspects such as making these basic sentences more interesting in some of our other blogs looking at writing – adverbs, adjectives, clauses, fronted adverbials etc.

Literateness

Yes, I know this is another one of my made up words, but like numerateness it fits the bill!

Children need to know how to construct sentences and the curriculum specifically tests whether they can do this. It also tests if children understand what the component parts of a sentence are. There is a focus on English Grammar across primary and increasingly secondary schools too.

Reading

Reading to your children and encouraging them to read themselves too (especially as they get older) is a great way to boost children’s vocabulary and help reinforce how sentences are constructed. There was a trial of children reading ebooks which shows that reading attainment, especially in boys, increases with the use of ebooks. Take a look here.

Getting help from a private tutor in Cambridgeshire.

If you would like further information on private tuition in Cambridge, Ely and the surrounding areas, there’s more information on the Tutor My Kids website here or you can call Rachel Law for a chat on 01223 858421.