Sentence Structure Teaching Resources
Teach students the elements of sentence structure this school year with printable worksheets, sentence-building activities, sorting games and more elementary school teaching resources designed to help extend your students' understanding of how to write clear and concise sentences that follow the rules of English grammar.
This extensive collection of teaching resources has been created by teachers for teachers like you. Aligned to the Common Core curriculum, the ELA collection includes editable worksheets and teaching presentations and more to save elementary teachers time on lesson planning.
Created by expert teachers, each resource in this sentence 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 about sentence structure, or just looking for fresh ways to engage your students? Read on for a primer from our teaching team!
English Sentence Structure Explained
From subjects to predicates, objects to clauses, the English language is packed with rules specific to sentence structure that students need to learn on the way to becoming proficient writers.
Ready to break down how to build a sentence in English and look at some examples? Let's go!
Subject
The subject of a sentence is the noun or pronoun that performs the action or is described in the sentence.
For example, in the sentence "Jaquan did his homework," Jaquan is the subject.
Predicate
The predicate of a sentence expresses the action or state of being in a sentence.
Let's go back to the sentence "Jaquan did his homework." In this case, did is the predicate.
Object
The object of a sentence is a noun or pronoun that receives the action of the verb.
For example, "homework" would be the object in "Jaquan did his homework."
Complement
The complement of a sentence is a word or phrase that completes the meaning of a sentence.
The complement can be a direct object, indirect object, or subject complement.
For example: "a doctor" in "She became a doctor."
Modifier
A modifier in a sentence provides additional information about a word or phrase in the sentence. It can be an adjective or an adverb. Example: "kind" in "She was a kind teacher."
What Are Clauses?
Clauses are groups of words containing a subject and a verb. They're important to understand when learning sentence structure. After all, one kind of clause is a sentence!
There are two main types of clauses:
- Independent Clause — An independent clause can stand alone as a complete sentence because it expresses a complete thought. For example: "I did all of my homework."
- Dependent Clause — A dependent clause cannot stand alone as a sentence because it does not express a complete thought. It relies on an independent clause to make sense. Example: "When I went to the store," (Dependent clause) "I bought an apple." (Independent clause). Dependent clauses can be paired with independent clauses to build sentences.
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St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt Worksheets
Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and write imaginative stories using a collection of narrative writing prompts.
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Valentine's Day - 3rd Grade English Worksheets
Review and practice a wide range of grammar skills with a pack of printable 3rd grade writing worksheets.
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Holiday Worksheet - Easter Sentences
Build and write sentences about Easter sentence-building worksheets.
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Christmas - Simple, Complex, and Compound Sentence Sort
Practice reading, identifying, and writing simple, compound, and complex sentences with a Christmas cut and paste worksheet.
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Christmas Worksheet - Sentence Editing
Edit and correct capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and spacing errors with a set of Christmas Fix the Sentence worksheets.
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Springtime Sentence Building - Interactive Activity
Build a strong sentence-writing foundation with an interactive spring sentence-building activity.
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Write About It! Winter Sentence Builder Pack
Differentiate writing instruction in primary grades with a group of leveled informational writing prompts about winter
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United States Patriotic Symbols - Holiday Worksheets
Build and write sentences about patriotic holidays in the United States with a group of six holiday sentence-building worksheets.
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Sentence Conjunctions Posters for Lower Elementary Students
Display this set of 8 grammar posters to teach students about sentence connectives and conjunctions.
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Halloween Writing Prompts - Bats
Differentiate writing instruction in primary grades with a group of leveled Halloween writing prompts about bats.
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Write About It! Spiders
Differentiate writing instruction in primary grades with a group of leveled informational writing prompts about spiders
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Write About It! Pumpkins - Differentiated Writing Prompts
Differentiate writing instruction in primary grades with a group of leveled fall writing prompts about pumpkins.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Sentence Worksheet
Build, read, and write sentences about Martin Luther King, Jr. with a cut-and-paste sentence building worksheet.
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Patriotic Holiday Worksheets – Sentence Building
Build and write sentences about different patriotic holidays with this cut-and-paste worksheet
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Thanksgiving Build-a-Sentence Worksheet
Build and write sentences about Thanksgiving with a cut-and-paste Thanksgiving worksheet for kindergarten and first grade.
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Singular/Plural Subject Verb Agreement Google Slides Interactive Activity
Improve sentence structure and grammar skills with a Google Interactive resource that focuses on singular and plural subject-verb agreement.
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Identifying Dependent Clauses Worksheet
Practice identifying dependent clauses in complex sentences with a dependent clause worksheet.
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Subject-Verb Agreement Concentration & Go Fish Game
Improve student sentence structure with a card game focusing on usage of correct subject-verb agreement in sentences.
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Has/Have, Do/Does Subject Verb Agreement Interactive Activity
Practice building sentences using has, have, do, and does with this Google Slides Interactive subject-verb agreement activity.
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Subject-Verb Stomp! Verb Agreement Board Game
Play a game of Subject-Verb Stomp! to engage your learners and build better sentence-writing skills.
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Do/Does Subject Verb Agreement Worksheet
Provide students with additional subject-verb agreement practice with a worksheet focusing on using DO and DOES correctly.
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Google Slides Interactive- Past, Present, and Future Verbs Activity
Develop student skills using the correct forms of past, present, and future tense verbs with this Google Slides Interactive activity.
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Complete and Incomplete Sentences Cut and Paste Worksheet
Sort 6 phrases by whether they are incomplete and complete sentences with this cut & paste worksheet.
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Types of Sentences Sorting Worksheet
A cut and paste sorting worksheet to practice identifying the four types of sentences.
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Complete or Incomplete? - Worksheet
Practice identifying incomplete and complete sentences.
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Complete and Incomplete Sentence Sort Worksheet
Practice sorting incomplete and complete sentences.
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Persuasive Writing Bump It Up Wall – Grade 6
Help your 6th-grade students "bump up" their persuasive writing with this bulletin board display.
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Persuasive Writing Bump It Up Wall – Grade 5
Help your 5th-grade students "bump up" their persuasive writing with this bulletin board display.
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Persuasive Writing Bump It Up Wall – Grade 4
Help your 4th-grade students "bump up" their persuasive writing with this bulletin board display.
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Types of Sentences Scoot Activity
Reinforce understanding of the 4 types of sentences with this set of 20 task cards.
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Persuasive Writing Bump It Up Wall – Grade 3
Help your 3rd-grade students "bump up" their persuasive writing with this bulletin board display.
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Sort It Out! - Types of Sentences
Practice identifying the 4 kinds of sentences by sorting all 30 cards by their sentence type and missing punctuation marks.
- Sentence Structure Worksheets
- Sentence Structure Games
- Sentence Structure Templates
- Sentence Structure Posters
- Sentence Structure for Kindergarten
- Sentence Structure for 1st Grade
- Sentence Structure for 2nd Grade
- Sentence Structure for 3rd Grade
- Sentence Structure for 4th Grade
- Sentence Structure for 5th Grade
- Sentence Structure for 6th Grade