Are you struggling to make correctly structured sentences?

Not sure, if you can teach that to your child, if you are having a difficult time yourself?

This can become a bigger issue, when the child starts with comprehension and other grammar rules in the school.

If the child isn’t able to comprehend what text they’re reading, then they won’t be able to write answers to the comprehension questions, as they really can’t understand the complete context of the text.

It is the necessary step to teach children, as they move from Kindergarten to Elementary school. In fact, this should be the first grammar lesson of each elementary grade. It requires understanding of the parts of sentence and the two most important parts of speech – noun and verb. Once, they know this, making grammatically correct sentences would be a breeze.

Let’s start by understanding what a Sentence is?

A sentence can give a statement, ask a question, give a command, indicate an exclamation, express a wish or an assertion, and could also show action performance.

When writing, a sentence always starts with a capital letter and a full-stop, exclamation, or a question mark ends the sentence.Some more examples of sentences,

• The girl is cooking some stew. (This sentence shows a statement.)
• Is it raining? (The sentence asks a question. It has a capital letter at the beginning but ends with a period (question mark.))
• What an incredible miracle! (The sentence ends with an exclamation mark as the period.)
• You must do it. (The sentence expresses a command.)

In order for a sentence to be complete, it needs two key elements – a subject and a verb. Additionally, the subject and verb must form a complete idea. That’s why understanding subjects, predicates, and objects is so important. These 3 elements are the 3-parts of a Sentence structure.

The subject of a sentence is a person, place, thing, or idea. The subject refers to the part of the sentence that tells who or what the sentence is about. The subject is a noun, pronoun or noun phrase.

In the example, “I like to play.” the subject (I) is doing something – liking to play. If you’re ever unsure about the subject of a sentence, see if you can locate the verb. Then, ask yourself who or what is doing or being that verb.

The predicate of a sentence includes the verb and everything that follows it. This typically tells what the subject does with an action verb or describes the subject using a linking verb and a complement.

In the example, “Kelly walked down the street.” ,”walked” is the action verb that tells the reader what Kelly is doing, and “down the street” is an adverb phrase that modifies the verb by describing where she walked.

Objects are noun phrases that are included in the predicate. They are the things being acted upon by the verb.
For example:Susan bought the gift.The dog caught the ball.The boy spilled the milk.

Unlike predicates, an object is not essential. Predicates are an essential part of a sentence because they contain verbs. Objects, however, provide further information that isn’t necessarily required. They are helpful, though, because they further explain the action of the verb. 

Now, let’s see the 3-step formula :

As you can see from the Graphic above, Subject and Predicates(aka verbs) are important to form complete contextual sentences. Objects may/may not be required depending on the text to give the meaning of the sentences.

Follow this 3-step formula to form the grammatically correct sentence structures, the formula is –
Subject + Predicate + Object = A complete sentence.

From the examples above, in the sentence – The dog caught the ball. The Dog is a Subject, caught is the verb/predicate and the ball is the object acted upon by the verb.

In the other example, Susan bought the gift. Susan is the subject, bought is the verb and the gift is the object.

It’s useful to know that verbs point back to subjects, predicates encompass verbs, and objects point back to verbs. Understanding what we write and how to use each part of speech will make us more powerful writers.

I really hope this post made it crystal clear in the formation of contextually and grammatically correct sentence structures. Have any questions about the sentences? Hit comment, and ask me! Would be happy to guide you!