Help your child to write better sentences

 


​Is your child finding it difficult to write in sentences? Do they make correct use of full stops and capital letters? Read on for some tips and fun exercises that you can do with your child and help them write better sentences. 


(You'll have to tweak some of this depending on the age and ability of your child.)

Tips and exercises 

As adults, we often expect children to be able to grasp writing in sentences, but can you imagine how difficult it must be to write in a sentence if you don't know what they really are? Sentences can be notoriously complicated to describe but we can easily encourage children to pick out some common attributes that sentences share.

Basically, children should realise that a sentence is a group of words that are put together to mean something.

Make sure your child understands that every sentence must have a capital letter at the beginning, a subject and a verb and it must end with a full stop, question or exclamation mark.

A simple sentence is known as a clause.

Here are a few examples of simple sentences:

The sky is blue.

Today is Wednesday.

He is funny.

Miss Jones is the teacher.

She loves her job.

Activities and tips

Encourage your child to use sentences when they respond to questions.

"How old are you?"
"I am six years old."

''What is your name?''
''My name is Mary.''

Make sure your child is able to write all the letters of the alphabet in both upper and lower case letters. 

"Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh ..."

Encourage your child to say what they want to write before actually putting pen to paper.
Say it - Write it - Check it

As your child progresses and they have grasped simple sentences, you can introduce conjunctions (sometimes called 'connectives'). Basically, conjunctions join words, clauses and phrases together making the sentences more interesting.

Conjunctions you can use to join clauses together include the following:

But, and, although, when, whenever, because, as, or, neither, so & yet.


As a follow-up, BBC Bitesize has an excellent guide for KS2 sentences and clauses.



 For more tips on reading and phonics acquisition go to Phonics: a 5 step guide for parents, and if you suspect dyslexia you might like to read Dyslexia: signs to look out for.