Fragment or Sentence?

Explicit Instruction/Teacher Modeling

• Write down two complete sentences and two sentence fragments on the board.
• Circle the predicates and underline the nouns as you read each sentence out loud.
• Verbalize how you identify subjects and predicates, and use that as the criteria to determine which of the things you wrote are complete sentences. If a line doesn't have both a subject and predicate, it's a sentence fragment.

Guided Practice/Interactive Modeling

• Pass out one sticky note to each student.
• Ask students to each write a sentence fragment or a complete sentence on their sticky note.
• When all students have finished writing, ask them to quietly get up and exchange their sticky note with another student.
• On the board, draw two columns: one labeled "Sentence" and the other labeled "Fragment."
• Have students come up one at a time and place their sticky note in the column they think it belongs in.
• After every student has classified their sticky note in a category, read each note out loud.
• Call on student volunteers to state whether the sticky note placement was correct.
• Discuss as a group any misplacement of sticky notes.

Independent Working Time

• Ask students to take out a piece of notebook paper.
• Instruct them to each write three complete sentences.
• They should circle the subject and underline the predicate of each sentence.
• Ask the students to write three sentence fragments.
• After each fragment, students should state what part is missing.

• Enrichment: Ask advanced students to write sentences with compound subjects and predicates.
• Support: Work with struggling students in a small intervention group to strengthen their skills. Have these students find subjects and predicates in simple sentences.

A document camera may be used to model the process of marking sentences.

• Collect and review students' papers.
• Provide feedback on all of the papers, then return them.
• Make a note of any students that are still struggling with the concepts.

• Provide time for students to read feedback on their papers
• Discuss the papers as a whole group.
• Ask for student volunteers to read their complete sentences.