Sentances

[IndigoBell]

How can I explain to my DS (age 9) what a sentance is?

He knows he needs to use capital letters / full stops to start and end sentances - but he doesn't know what a sentance is.

it's a sentence

Good way to describe it is to try to explain that you talk naturally (normally) in sentences.

Are you hungry?
what's for lunch?

etc - would that help??

now I am doubting my spelling of sentance. Is it sentance? or sentence?

sentence

It takes a bit of practice to identify a sentence. One of the best ways I have used is to say to student " first a sentence names someone or something, then it tells more".

Give a few simple sentences as examples and ask your child to underline the part that names, then the words that tell more. You read the sentence to him first so all he has to worry about is listening, not reading.

Sam went down the street. Who does the sentence name? 'Sam'. What words tell more about Sam? "went down the street."

Actually, we frequently do not talk in sentences, but phrases and fragments! Written language has different conventions from spoken.

Thanks guys.

This is my DS (not my DD) and he is an excellent reader. He's 9, so I'm talking about far more complicated examples.

He needs to use punctuation in creative writing - which is all his own work, so doesn't follow these easy examples.

Are there any actual rules that I can explain? Or is it just something you're meant to pick up...

There are rules of grammar but they are rather complicated and abstract, you would have to talk in terms your son is unlikely to understand. (eg subject, predicate, subordinate clause etc etc).
You said in your original post he did not know what a sentence was. The best way to teach children is by giving two types of examples, one of which is in the cateogry 'sentence' the others which is in the category ' not sentence' so that he can learn to discriminate. Begin with simple examples and when he can reliably discriminate go on to complex examples.

..You can either hope children will 'pick' things up or you can teach them. Curriculum design is quite a sophisticated exercise!

Thanks Malaleuca.

Here's an example of his work:

?Okay i am versa i am not going to tell you where you are i am going to tell you that you've been captured by the resistance of human earth mate now either you surrender or I will shoot you dead? said versa

I know how to punctuate the sentence - but I have no idea how to teach him :)

Try to use some examples from his reading to break down a sentence
ie. identify
Subject (noun/pronoun)
Verb
Object
Adverb
Adjective
Clauses

The best way (I think to describe it is)

HE (or she) DID SOMETHING (action) to HER (or him).

This is the basic subject-verb-object sentence:

The man kicked the cat

THE MAN is the subject
KICKED is the verb (action)
THE CAT is the object.

You could write lots of subjects and objects on bits of paper (the man, the girl, the dog, the hat, the cake), and lots of verbs (kicked, ate, ran, walked) on other bits of paper, then just play a game -

You'd get (for instance) the man at the dog, or the girl swallowed the cat.

You might then need some prepositions (to, on, in, over etc) on other bits of paper, and you'd get more complex sentences like

The dog jumped over the cake

I have no idea if I have just made it sound even more confusing, sorry!

the man ATE the dog I mean!

Read with him since he's a good reader... A familiar book (just a bit of it) But ask him to read with a "writer's eyes" this time and point out the punctuation that the author uses and how the writer decides to end sentences and begin new ones. Look through other familiar texts as well. Really get him to notice and think about the writer's use of punctuation...etc.

Fun Sentence construction

Also - using the example of the long sentence you posted of his - it's really helpful to get him to read it aloud and see where his voice naturally pauses or stops. So for example, I imagine that he'd instinctively stop after 'versa', which suggests he needs a full stop: "Okay I am Versa."

Then you might find that he wants to pause after 'Okay', and he might want to use a comma: "Okay, I am Versa."

Grammar is supposed to help the reader replicate the rhythms of natural speech, so reading aloud is a great start with working out how to break up a sentence.

You're dead right Indigo, he needs a lot of instruction in conventional grammar!.
This has the makings of growing into a lovely thread!
Until understanding the basic sentence structure is in place, why go on to the complicated things?

sentence games

Lovely stuff!
Get him to read it aloud to you more than once. Ask him why he stopped, or took a breath, at the same place every time. Ask him how anyone else would know to read it like that.
Try putting the wrong punctuation in, [it may sound something like Yoda 'Ok I am Versa I am not.' Or the 'now either you surrender or I will' may make him think]
Once he has grasped the real purpose of commas etc it may make more sense to him.

My class have a "Rainbow Writing " book they write each sentence in a different colour (I buy gel pen sets from Tesco) When they get to a full stop (question mark - exclamation mark - ellipse etc) they change colour and start with a new colour and a capital letter. I notice he is using lower case i - I tell my children they are important so they need a capital letter for their name and I (because that takes the place of their name)

It's something that children do take lots of practice to understand. I displayed something along the lines of this in my classroom earlier this year (just googled it to get the example):

'So what, in practical terms, is a sentence? Well, a written sentence should have certain characteristics:

?a capital letter at the beginning
?a full-stop at the end (Or similiar punctuation e.g. question mark, exclamation mark etc.)
?a subject (who or what the sentence is about)
?a verb (that tells you what's happening)
?and, finally, many people say that it should express 'a single thought.

There are a few other helpful points to remember about a sentence:

?a sentence can be long or short
?it can be very simple or very complex
?a sentence can be broken up with commas, semi-colons, colons, dashes and so on'

This is why reading is so important for writing as the more you read the more of an understanding you will get of sentences.

I am not as knowledgeable but I always used to think of it in terms of speaking and thus breathing.

Reading back his work aloud would help I'd imagine and finding the natural breaks.

Another thing to do is for adult to read passage aloud and get the student to count the pauses where full stops go, then edit the same passage for full stops afterwards.

I have a useful little programme called Teacher's Pet that allows you to remove all the full stops from a passage.

www.teachers-pet.org/

I agree.
We are thinking about an imaginative 9 year old. He has the words to convey his story and needs the tools to enable others to share the full impact of the plot!
An explanation of verbs, nouns, subordinate clauses is unlikely to make him an enthusiastic writer.

Any games or practice he has with sentence structure, grammar... Etc. needs to be brought back to real text so that he can see how it actually applies to real writing.
Some great ideas here! :)

Sentence Doctor I use this one quite often in class just as a 5 minute warm up.