Types of Sentences Teaching Resources
Teach the types of sentences in your English classes with printable worksheets, writing activities and more teacher-created and curriculum-aligned teaching resources!
Our teacher team has created this extensive collection of teaching resources to help students understand how to create various sentence types from simple to compound-complex and use the proper punctuation. Aligned to the Australian National curriculum, the English collection includes editable worksheets and teaching presentations and more to save teachers time on lesson planning.
Created by expert teachers, each resource in this grammar collection has been carefully reviewed and curated by our team. That means it's ready to use in the classroom! You'll even find editable resources, plus differentiated options.
New to teaching sentence types, or just looking for fresh ways to engage your students? Read on for a primer from our teaching team!
What Are the 4 Types of Sentences?
So what types of sentences do kids typically learn about in primary school, and why do they matter? It's often said there are four basic types, and it's technically true. But the four types you're teaching will depend on the year level you're teaching!
Sentence Types for Early Years
Students in Year 1 will typically learn one batch of sentence types, broken out by their function and punctuation type.
Declarative Sentences
Declarative sentences make statements or express facts, opinions, or information. This sentence type also ends with a period.
Interrogative Sentences
An interrogative sentences asks questions. They end with a question mark and start with either an auxiliary verb or one of the following question words:
- What
- When
- Why
- Where
- Who
- How
Imperative Sentences
An imperative sentence gives commands, instructions, or requests. They can be phrased in a way that sounds polite or forceful. Imperative sentences usually lack a subject because the pronoun you is implied.
Exclamatory Sentences
The final type of sentence taught at this grade level is exclamatory. These convey strong emotions, surprise, excitement or emphasis. They often begin with "What" or "How" and end with an exclamation mark.
Sentence Types for Middle and Upper Years
Middle and upper year students learn more complex sentence types, including a type that's literally named complex!
Simple Sentence
A simple sentence contains one independent clause and expresses a complete thought.
A good starting point for teaching sentence types, these sentences all contain a subject and a predicate, and they provide the foundation for understanding the basic structure of a sentence.
Compound Sentence
Compound sentences contain two or more independent clauses, and a coordinating conjunction joins them together. This type offers an entrance into discussing the different comma rules, as compound sentences always need a comma inserted before the conjunction.
Teaching compound sentences also allows students to explore relationships between ideas by connecting two or more independent clauses, and expressing contrasting, additive or causal relationships.
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence contains one independent clause and at least one dependent clause.
This type not only helps students better understand the difference between independent and dependent clauses, but it can help kids better understand subordination. With complex sentences, students learn to express cause and effect and conditionality in their writing.
Compound-Complex Sentence
A sentence that contains two or more independent clauses and at least one dependent clause is considered a compound-complex sentence.
These help our students express more intricate relationships between ideas.
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Alice in Wonderland Escape Room – Simple, Compound and Complex Sentences
Help Alice escape Sentence Land in this Alice in Wonderland Escape Room Game covering simple, compound and complex sentences.
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Christmas - Simple, Complex, and Compound Sentence Sort
Read, identify and write simple, compound and complex sentences with a dash of Christmas.
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Simple, Compound and Complex Sentences Posters
Use these posters to show your students the attributes that make up simple, compound and complex sentences.
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Daily Compound Sentence Worksheets
Use our Daily Compound Sentence worksheets to help your students identify, write, and edit compound sentences.
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Simple, Compound and Complex Sentences Worksheets
Use this set of five grammar worksheets to teach about the structures of simple, compound and complex sentences.
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Compound, Complex and Simple Sentences PowerPoint
Introduce your students to compound, complex and simple sentences with an engaging types of sentences PowerPoint.
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Complex Sentence vs Compound Sentence Worksheets
Download a set of Complex Sentence vs Compound Sentence Worksheets to help your upper primary students practise writing, identifying and comparing sentence types.
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Simple and Compound Sentence Structure Lesson Slides
Use our Simple and Compound Sentence Structure PowerPoint to teach your students about parts of sentences, subjects, predicates, and types of sentences!
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Complex Sentences Worksheet Pack
Help your students practise writing complex sentences with our printable Complex Sentences Worksheet Pack for Year 5.
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Cut and Paste Sentences Worksheets (F-1)
Practise making simple sentences with a set of printable Cut and Paste Sentence Worksheets.
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Differentiated Types of Sentences Posters
Display these posters highlighting the four types of sentences and teach your students the difference between them.
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Christmas Activity Printables - Types of Sentences Sort
Help your students identify the four types of sentences with a printable Christmas sorting activity on declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory sentences.
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Punctuation & Sentence Types Worksheets (1-2)
Identify the four types of sentences and their punctuation marks with a printable set of Punctuation & Sentence Type Worksheets for Grade 1 and Grade 2.
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Simple and Compound - Roll a Sentence Dice Game
Play a ‘Roll-a-Sentence’ dice game to help your students practise writing simple and compound sentences.
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Writing Compound-Complex Sentences Worksheet
Use a Compound-Complex Sentences Worksheet to help your upper primary students learn to use advanced sentence structures in their writing.
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Types of Clauses Posters
Introduce your students to the types of sentence clauses with a set of printable Types of Clauses Anchor Charts.
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Types of Sentences Posters
Display a set of types of sentences posters to help your students discover various types of sentences.
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Compound Sentences Quiz
Assess your students ability to identify, write, and edit compound sentences with a printable Compound Sentence Quiz.
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Year 6 Compound Sentence Writing Worksheets - Conjunctions & Semicolons
Print these Year 6 Compound Sentence Writing Worksheets to help your students practise writing compound sentences using conjunctions and semicolons.
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Unsinkable Titanic - Editing & Sentence Combining Worksheets
Practise editing and combining simple sentences with our Unsinkable Titanic Weekly Editing & Sentence Combining worksheets.
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Sort It Out! - Types of Sentences Practice Activity
Practise sorting and matching examples of the four types of sentences (command, statement, question, exclamation) with a Year 1 Types of Sentences Practice Game.
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Compound Sentences Interactive Game
Play a Compound Sentences Interactive game to practise identifying, correcting, and writing compound sentences.
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Colour By Code - Simple or Compound Sentence Worksheet
Use a Colour By Code Simple or Compound Sentence worksheet to help your students practise identifying simple and compound sentence types.
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Sentence Types & Punctuation for Grade 1 - Four Corners Game
Review sentence types and punctuation for grade 1 students with an engaging Four Corners Punctuation Game.
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Sentence Trains - Sentence Building Activity
Teach your year 1 students about sentence types and punctuation with Sentence Trains, a fun Sentence Building Activity.
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Writing Compound Sentences with Conjunctions Worksheet
Assign this worksheet to allow students to practise using coordinating conjunctions to create compound sentences.
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Combining Sentences With 'And' Worksheets
Use these printable Combining Sentences With ‘And’ Worksheets to help your students practise using the conjunction ‘and’ to form compound sentences.
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Compound-Complex Sentence Test
Assess your students' understanding of compound-complex sentences with a printable Compound-Complex Sentence Test.
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Types of Sentences Game - Year 1-2 SCOOT!
Play a round of Types of Sentences SCOOT! To help your students practise identifying types of sentences.
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Simple, Compound and Complex Sentences Sort
Practise reading and identifying simple, compound and complex sentences with this sorting activity.
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Fixing Sentence Fragments Worksheets
Use these no-prep sentence fragments worksheets to help your students improve their sentence writing skills.
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Combining Sentences Worksheet Pack
Download and use our combining sentences worksheet pack to help your students learn to combine sentences in various ways.