Sentence Types Teaching Resources
Teach the types of sentences in your ELA 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 Common Core curriculum, the ELA 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 elementary 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 grade level you're teaching!
Sentence Types for Early Elementary
Students younger than fourth grade 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 Upper Elementary
Older 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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Christmas Writing Center - Types of Sentences for 2nd Grade
Help your students answer “What Type of Sentence Is This?’ with a printable Christmas sorting activity on the 4 types of sentences.
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Complete and Incomplete Sentence Task Cards
These task cards are best used as independent practice or formative assessment assignments during sentence structure lessons.
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Compound Sentence Quiz
Assess your students ability to identify, write, and edit compound sentences with a printable Compound Sentence Quiz.
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Simple & Compound Sentence Structure Lesson Slides (2-3)
Use our Simple and Compound Sentence Structure Lesson Slides to teach your 2nd and 3rd graders about sentences, subjects, predicates, and simple/compound sentences.
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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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Writing Compound-Complex Sentences Worksheet
Use a Compound-Complex Sentences Worksheet to help your upper elementary and middle school students learn to use advanced sentence structures in their writing.
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Combining Sentences With "And" Worksheets (2 - 4)
Use these printable Combining Sentences With ‘And’ Worksheets to help your students practice using the conjunction ‘and’ to form compound sentences.
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Daily Practice - Compound Sentences Worksheets
Use our Daily Compound Sentences 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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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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Four Types of Sentences Poster Collection - Primary and Intermediate
Display these posters highlighting the four types of sentences and teach your students to use varied sentence types in their writing.
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6th Grade Compound Sentence Writing Worksheets - Conjunctions & Semicolons
Print these 6th Grade Compound Sentence Writing Worksheets to help your students practice writing compound sentences using conjunctions and semicolons.
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Complex Sentence Worksheet Pack
Help your students practice writing complex sentences with our printable Complex Sentence Worksheet Pack for upper elementary.
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Fixing Sentence Fragments Worksheet Pack
Use this no-prep sentence fragments worksheet pack to help your students improve their sentence writing skills.
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Compound-Complex Sentence Quiz
Assess your students' understanding of compound-complex sentences with a printable Compound-Complex Sentence Quiz.
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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.
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Sentence Types & Punctuation for Grade 1 and 2 - Four Corners Game
Review sentence types and punctuation for grade 1 and 2 students with an engaging Four Corners Punctuation Game.
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Types of Sentences Flip Book
Create a helpful types of sentences flipbook with our Differentiated 4 Kinds of Sentences foldable graphic organizers.
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Punctuation & Sentence Types Worksheet Pack (1-2)
Identify the four types of sentences and their punctuation marks with a printable set of Punctuation & Sentence Type Worksheets for 1st and 2nd Grade.
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Finish It! - End Punctuation Task Cards (1-2)
Practice adding end marks to sentences with a printable set of Punctuation Task Cards for 1st and 2nd graders.
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Roll and Write - Simple and Compound Sentence Game
Play a ‘Roll-a-Sentence’ simple and compound sentence game to help your students practice writing simple and compound sentences.
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Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences Poster Pack
Display and use these handy anchor charts to teach your students about simple, compound, and complex sentences.
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Complex vs Compound Sentences Worksheets (5-6)
Download a set of Complex vs Compound Sentences worksheets to help your upper elementary students practice writing, identifying and comparing sentence types.
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Combining Sentences Anchor Chart Pack (5-6)
Use our Combining Sentences Anchor Chart Pack to help your students learn new ways to combine simple sentences in their writing.
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Compound Sentences Interactive Game
Play a Compound Sentences Interactive game to practice identifying, correcting, and writing compound sentences.
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Compound, Complex, and Simple Sentences PowerPoint Slideshow
Introduce your students to compound, complex and simple sentences with an engaging types of sentences PowerPoint.
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Color By Code - Simple or Compound Sentences Worksheet
Use a Simple or Compound Sentences Color By Code worksheet to help your students practice identifying simple and compound sentence types.
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SCOOT! Finish the Sentence Game for Sentence Fragments
Use this Finish the Sentence Game to help your students practice correcting sentence fragments.
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Complete or Incomplete Sentences Worksheet Pack
Download our printable Complete or Incomplete Sentences Worksheet Pack to help your students practice identifying examples of complete and incomplete sentences.
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Identify Sentence or Fragment Worksheet Pack
Use an Identify Sentence or Fragment worksheet to help your students build their sentence writing skills.
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The Unsinkable Titanic - Weekly Paragraph and Sentence Combining + Answer Key
Practice combining simple sentences to form compound and complex sentences with the Unsinkable Titanic Weekly Paragraphs and Sentence Combining worksheets & answer key.
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4 Types of Sentences Game - Scoot Activity (1-2)
Play a round of Types of Sentences SCOOT! To help your students practice identifying types of sentences.