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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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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Statement, Question, Command, Exclamation Cut and Paste Worksheet
Identify statement, command, question, and exclamation sentences with a Types of Sentences Cut and Paste worksheet for Year 2.
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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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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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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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Compound-Complex Sentence Test
Assess your students' understanding of compound-complex sentences with a printable Compound-Complex Sentence Test.
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Complete or Incomplete Sentences Worksheet
Download our printable Complete or Incomplete Sentences Worksheet Pack to help your students practise identifying examples of complete and incomplete sentences.
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Sentence Saga - Sentence Construction Activity
Teach your students to build a better sentence with Sentence Saga, a printable sentence construction activity for upper primary.
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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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SPLAT! Types of Sentences Card Game (Year 1-2)
Play SPLAT!, a types of sentences game to help your students learn to identify statement, command, question, and exclamation sentences
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Emoji Sentence Sorting Activity (Year 1-2)
Teach your students about statement, command, exclamation, and question sentences with our Emoji Sentence sorting activity.
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Super Sentence Game - Statement, Command, Exclamation & Question
Turn sentence structure practice into an exciting game with the Super Sentence Game for Year 1 and 2.
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Building Strong Sentences Teaching Presentation
Share this 15-slide teaching presentation with your students to help them understand the key grammar concepts of compound sentences,coordinating conjunctions and clauses.
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Cupid's Compound Sentences Activity - Interactive Game
Build some sweet sentence writing skills using a fun Valentine’s Day Compound Sentence activity.
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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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Roll and Write – Simple, Compound and Complex Sentences
An interactive activity to help students practise writing simple, compound and complex sentences.
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Simple Sentence Dominoes (Version 3)
A set of 30 dominoes to assist younger students with building simple sentences.
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Simple Sentence Dominoes (Version 2)
A set of 30 dominoes to assist younger students with building simple sentences.
- Free Plan
Simple Sentence Dominoes (Version 1)
A set of 30 dominoes to assist younger students with building simple sentences.