Great Tips for Teaching Sentences in High School English

Introduction

Teaching sentences in high school English is nothing new to high school English teachers.

For many teachers, their incoming students either haven’t had enough practice with writing or have struggled with writing to the point of shutting down when writing-based activities are assigned.

So, what do you do when a large percentage of your class struggles with writing? Ignoring it isn’t possible as students generally do need to write whether it’s for the state assessment, an in-class assignment, an essay for a college application, or even a resume and cover letter.

Engaging them with simple writing activities is one possibility as it helps reduce anxiety associated with writing. Once students are comfortable enough with writing, it’s time to teach them how to construct meaningful sentences.

What follows are some tips for teaching sentences in high school English.

Review Sentence Structure

When reviewing writing, sentence structure is perhaps the most important thing to review (or reteach) students.

When reviewing sentence structure, we’re talking specifically about subjects and predicates, meaning:

• Subject: the who or the what of a sentence (Noun)
• Predicate: the action of the who or what (Verb)

Having students practice how to identify the subject and predicate is a great starting point; from here, you can move on to simple subject, complete subject, simple predicate, and complete predicate, compound subject, and compound predicate.

Thankfully, subjects and predicates aren’t too difficult for many students to grasp; once they understand that sentences contain these two basic elements, their foundation for sentence writing is set.

It helps that the review is chunked, allowing students to practice what they’re reviewing via integrated practices in the lesson.

Review Sentence Types

Before reviewing sentence types, students must know what an independent clause and a dependent clause are.

• Independent clause: a complete thought that can stand on its own
• Dependent clause: an incomplete thought that can’t stand on its own

Independent clauses and dependent clauses can make up the different types of sentences that are common in writing, which are:

• Simple Sentence (one independent clause)
  • EX: I went to the store.
• Compound Sentence (two independent clauses joined together by a coordinating conjunction, a semicolon, and a conjunctive adverb.
  • EX1: I went to the store, and I bought some ice cream. (coordinating conjunction)
  • EX2: I went to the store; I bought some ice cream. (semicolon)
  • EX3: I went to the store; indeed, I bought some ice cream. (conjunctive adverb as a conjunction)
  • EX4: I went to the store; I, indeed, bought some ice cream. (conjunctive adverb as an adverb)
• Complex Sentence: one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses; contains a subordinating conjunction)
  • EX1: I went to the store because I wanted some ice cream. (dependent clause at the end of the sentence)
  • EX2: Because I wanted some ice cream, I went to the store. (dependent clause at the beginning of the sentence)
• Compound-Complex Sentence (combination of a compound sentence and a complex sentence)
  • EX1: I went to the store, and I bought some ice cream because I was craving something sweet. (two independent clauses and one dependent clause)
  • EX2: Because I wanted some ice cream, I went to the store, and I bought a pint of strawberry ice cream. (dependent clause and two independent clauses)

For compound sentences and complex sentences, it helps to provide students with a list of coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and conjunctive adverbs.

Just like chunking the review of subjects and predicates, a review of sentence types should also be chunked, allowing students to practice within the lesson.

Practice with Sentence Variety

Once students have a strong understanding of sentence-writing fundamentals, the next step of teaching sentences in high school English is having students practice with sentence variety.

Practice makes perfect, and the more opportunities students have to practice the different sentence types, the more likely they’re able to write them on their own.

One way to have them practice is by writing a simple sentence and having them turn it into a compound sentence, a complex sentence, and a compound-complex sentence. In the examples I typed for Review Sentence Types, I used the same sentence throughout (I went to the store).

In addition to transforming a simple sentence into other types, students should also have opportunities to identify sentence variety in everyday writing. In whichever text students are reading, they should be encouraged to identify the types of sentences the author is using. This, conveniently, also helps them develop their own writing style.

Regularly assigning sentences exercises also helps with practicing. This can be accomplished as a warm-up activity or an assignment where they have to:

• break down a compound sentence into two independent clauses
• make a compound sentence into a compound-complex sentence
• turn a simple sentence into a complex sentence
• and more

The possibilities are endless!

Finally, regularly quizzing students on sentence variety (both identifying and writing) is another way to solidify their understanding of sentence variety. This can be accomplished through either a multiple-choice quiz or a short-response quiz.

Conclusion

Teaching sentences in high school English can be a challenge if students are initially hesitant to write; however, by reviewing and practicing sentence writing with them, they’ll have an opportunity to strengthen their writability.

How do you do about teaching sentences in high school English? Let me know in the comments!