Developing sentences with young children

I spent a great day with colleagues yesterday, considering books that we could use in literacy lesson.  One of my favourites was 'What Happens When...' by Delphine Chedru.

Teachers often ask me how to help children understand where full stops should be used. Well, where do we put a full stop?  At the end of a sentence, of course!  But that's not much help to children if they don't understand what a sentence is.  Where is the end of the sentence?  Well, it's where the full stop is!  When I use Excel, I sometimes get a message telling me I have a circular reference; the messages we give to children can also set up confusing loops in their understanding. So, how to we help children grasp the concept of a sentence - before they even start to write?

Sentences in English are all about the verb: something happens or just is.  We must be careful that 'doing' word does not become synonymous with 'verb' in children's minds, because the verb could also be a 'being' or 'having' word.  I think it's quite interesting that the verbs we use seem to fit into categories of the primary auxiliary verbs we use in our language (to be, to do and to have).  Do let me know if you think of other categories though!

We need to create sentences with children and discuss them so that children can understand their structure and the function of the words used, but this needs to be an enjoyable experience and foster a curiosity about their language.  'What Happens When...' is a wonderful book for developing sentences to discuss with the children.  On each double page spread there is a question and a picture of an object (great for developing questions too!)  The picture then unfolds to another double page picture which portrays one possible answer.  I would use the book in this way.

Look at the first question with the children: 'What happens when my balloon floats up, out of the zoo...?' Discuss what is happening in the picture.  What is the balloon doing?  What is happening? What is floating?  Where is it floating? What is the bird doing?  Where is the balloon?  Encourage them to answer in sentences by prompting for more information if they just answer 'floating' or 'in the sky'. Use specific praise for 'a good sentence'.  It's important to use the terminology 'sentence' with them as a matter of course, so they get used to hearing it alongside good examples and their own successes.

Ask the children what might happen next to the balloon.  Encourage them to answer in sentences and ask questions about the sentence.  For example, they might say 'The bird will pop the balloon.' This could lead to questions such as 'What will the bird do?', 'Who will pop the balloon? or 'What will the bird pop?'.  This gets the children used to talking about their sentences, but also develops an awareness of subject, verb and object (although, of course, not using this terminology).  Encourage peer questioning about sentences too.

When they have come up with some suggestions, turn the page and see what the author suggests.  This next picture could lead to further sentences and discussion.  For young children, this would make an ideal guided activity.

You could develop the exercise further to model writing one of the sentences and show children that, after a sentence with one thing 'happening', we need to add a full stop.  I would use the full stop screwdriver from the Sentence Toolkit to model the action of fixing my full stop at the end of my oral sentence and encourage them to use this at the end of each of their oral sentences.


The acting out of sentences with a mimed full stop added, followed by discussion about that sentence, can be incorporated into many different lessons.  For those of you who teach phonics, this discussion about what is going on in sentences is the grammatical equivalent of oral blending and segmenting.  These sorts of activities with children help them to create oral sentences, which can be gradually extended as their writing develops.  It's always good to 'test out' a sentence orally before writing, to see how it sounds and what sense it makes.  An early start in this will help writing composition later.  And the discussion about what is happening, and how many things are happening, in their sentences before they use their full stop screwdriver should help reduce the number of sentences which all run into each other, with no punctuation in sight!