Introduction
Is it important to know how to teach sentence fragments? Considering many of today’s students often write in fragments, the answer is a resounding yes!
In reviewing various essays, short answer responses, and responses to comprehension questions from my students, receiving responses riddled with sentence fragments has been the norm. What’s even more shocking: students often say they feel this is normal because it’s exactly how they communicate with each other.
How, then, should one go about teaching sentence fragments? Here are some strategies that I’ve found useful.
Review and Practice Sentence Fragments
The first step of how to teach sentence fragments involves reviewing them with students.
The review should focus on why sentence fragments are fragments, which is for one of three common reasons:
- It’s missing a subject, and it only has a predicate
- It’s missing a predicate, and it only has a subject
- It’s a dependent clause that needs an independent clause
Write or project several examples of sentence fragments and complete sentences, and have students discuss what makes them a complete sentence or a sentence fragment.
Having students understand that the sentence fragments needs a subject, a predicate, or an independent clause to make it complete is very important as it helps them attain mastery. This also helps provide a foundation for writing.
Provide Independent Practice Opportunities
After the review, the next step of how to teach sentence fragments involves students working independently.
Whether it’s a worksheet that has students identifying and correcting sentence fragments or an assignment that assess their understanding, providing multiple practice opportunities helps them attain mastery and deepen understanding of sentence fragments.
One thing I like to do is take sentences from any text we’re reading and either change them into a sentence fragment or maintain its complete sentence form. Then, as a warm-up activity or exit ticket, I have students fix the sentence fragments or make the complete sentences into sentence fragments.
Quizzes and tests, too, are another important method of assessing student knowledge of sentence fragments. In addition to providing multiple-choice questions, include questions where students have to explain why, for example, the sentence fragment is a fragment, or feature questions where students have to turn a complete sentence into a sentence fragment.
This unique assessment approach ensures that students are adequately demonstrating their understanding and mastery of sentence fragments in various ways.
Engage Students with Creative Activities
Creative activities are a great supplement to traditional assignments and assessments when wondering how to teach sentence fragments. Two activities my students enjoy doing are Sentence Fragment Sort and Sentence Fragment Detective.
Sentence Fragment Sort
In Sentence Fragment Sort, students in groups of 2–3 must work together to sort cards into two piles: complete sentences and sentence fragments.
Using note cards, I create six different sets of sentence fragments and complete sentences. This helps with variety and ensuring that no group gets the same types of sentences (which also reduces the likelihood of cheating).
Groups are given about 5–10 minutes (depending on the class’s needs) to sort the sentences into the correct pile; once time has elapsed, each group shares their piles and explains how they were able to distinguish between sentence fragments and complete sentences.
Fragment Detective
Similar to Sentence Fragment Sort, Fragment Detective has students working in groups of 2–3 and reading a paragraph that contains both complete sentences and sentence fragments.
In preparing this activity, I create six different paragraphs on random topics. The reason for this is the same as why I create six different sets of fragments and complete sentences for Sentence Fragment Sort: to ensure variety and to reduce the likelihood of cheating.
On a giant easel pad paper (or something similar), students create a T-chart and use two different colors to label one side Sentence Fragments and the other Complete Sentences. Next, they are given 10 minutes (again, depending on class need) to read their given paragraph carefully and identify the fragments and sentences to write them on their giant T-chart.
Afterward, students present the results of their detective work and share how they would fix some of the fragments to make them complete sentences.
Both Sentence Fragment Sort and Fragment Detective are great activities because it makes students more active in their learning; plus, it gamifies the learning experience.
Conclusion
Knowing how to teach sentence fragments might seem tricky, but with enough practice and repetition, students will not only know and understand how sentence fragments work, but they’ll also be less likely to make the same errors in their own writing.
How do you teach sentence fragments?
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