Get Crafty! Combining Sentences

Introduction

• Explain to your students that today they will be learning how to combine, or put together, two sentences to make their writing more interesting.
• Ask the class some questions to review what goes into a complete sentence. For example: What is a complete sentence? What is a subject? What is a predicate?
• Define subject as what or whom the sentence is about. Define predicate as the part of speech that tells something about the subject.
• If necessary, write a simple sentence on the board to give your class an example of a subject and a predicate within the context of a sentence.
• Tell the class they will use what this knowledge to try a new writing strategy called combining sentences. Remind the class that they can combine two sentences only when they have a common subject or a common predicate.
• Hold up the ball, or object of your choice, and show it to the class. Give a verbal example of two simple sentences, then one combined sentence. For example: This ball is green. This ball is round. I can combine those two sentences by saying, "This ball is green and round."