Building Complex Sentences

I'm on holidays over here in Australia and am enjoying the break to catch up on lots of things. I have a list a mile long and am a little bit addicted to crossing things off of it!

First of all, wow! I have had such a great response to my Building Better Sentences post that I've decided to do a sister packet called Building Complex Sentences.

I realise that these are only taught from certain grades but it can be great for differentiation in some of the lower grades, also! It is not for teaching complex sentences but simply for reinforcing them.

Here it is:

It has the same basic layout as the first packet, which is great because the children will be familiar with the sheets.

1. Students write a simple sentence to match the picture. In this case, a sad child. Again, I've included differentiated simple sentences to match each picture, in case students cannot think of their own.

2. They then 'build' their sentence by using a conjunction to form a compound sentence.

3. In this packet, however, I've included an anchor chart with some linking words that can be used to build complex sentences. I would enlarge this so it is visible to the children in the classroom. As I said, this isn't supposed to be used to teach complex sentences but for reinforcment.

Students may choose some linking words that will suit their sentence to create a complex sentence.

You can find it in my store here!

Building Better Sentences

Ok, I know I said a couple of weeks ago that I would do a follow up post on my maths but I'm skipping that for the moment and will do it soon!

Today, I wanted to share with you some easy activity sheets that I've put together to help children 'build' better sentences.

I thought the best way to explain the sheets is to show you!

#1 Give students an activity sheet.

#2 See that cute little picture in the corner?

Students write a simple sentence to match that little picture.

What if they have trouble coming up with a sentence, or you have some little ones that you know you'll need to guide?

No problem!

I've included a simple sentence sort that matches each activity sheet/picture so you are able to differentiate!

 

#3 Students 'build' their sentence by using a conjunction to make their sentence 'bigger'.

#4 Finally, they make their sentence even better by adding some adjectives to make their wonderful sentence descriptive and exciting!

I've included 30 activity sheets with different pictures and each one comes with a simple sentence sort for differentiation.

I've also included different spellings/words to suit everyone (e.g. crocodile/alligator).

It's 20% off for the next few days!

How do you get your students building bigger sentences?