The How-To Guide for Teaching Developing Sentences
Teaching students how to build better sentences is key to developing strong, impactful writing. By focusing on developing sentences, students learn to add meaningful details, vary sentence structures, and create clear, descriptive writing. It’s not about making sentences longer—it’s about teaching them to think critically about how their words work together to convey meaning.
Today, I’m here to share my step-by-step guide on how to teach developing sentences to your students. When we explicitly teach this skill, students move beyond the basics of subject and predicate. They learn how to use adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and other tools to craft vivid, detailed sentences. This not only improves their writing clarity but also enhances their ability to communicate effectively in any context. Grab my free How-to-Teach Guide on Developing Sentences HERE or scroll down to the end of this post.
How to Teach Developing Sentences
Say to students: Developing sentences is a very important part of the writing process. When you develop your sentences, you add details that help your readers understand your ideas clearly. It’s your chance to improve your sentences by making them more interesting, descriptive, and engaging. Developing sentences is the step where you can make sure your writing paints a clear picture and expresses your thoughts exactly the way you want before sharing it with your readers.
Then, use my 5-step method to teach your students how to master developing sentences.
1. Establish a clear purpose and guidelines.
Before diving into developing sentences, provide your students with a clear purpose and guidelines. Explain that there are four reasons we should develop sentences in our writing:
- Communication: Sentences help us express our thoughts and ideas clearly.
- Understanding: Well-structured sentences make it easier for readers to understand our writing.
- Creativity: Developing sentences allows us to share our stories and express our feelings.
- Connection: Sentences connect our ideas, helping to create a bigger picture for the reader.
After establishing a purpose for developing sentences, you need to set clear guidelines.
Explain that there are three steps when developing sentences:
- Start with a subject and predicate.
- Add details.
- Check for clarity.
You will be going into more detail for each step during the next part of the teaching process. This step is just to establish a clear purpose and guidelines so students know what to expect.
*At this step, write each main step on an anchor chart so students can use the anchor chart as a reference throughout your unit. See how I set up my anchor charts above. All of the information on the anchor charts can be found in my Developing Sentences Teaching Slides found HERE.
Access printable anchor charts in the Developing Sentences Printable Resource.
2. Set the foundation with subject and predicate.
Then, it is time to teach the first step in sentence development: Starting with a subject and predicate. Students should understand this “base” or “foundation” for developing sentences.
Say to students: By starting with a clear subject and predicate, you give your sentence a strong foundation. Without them, a sentence feels incomplete or confusing. Think of it like building a house—the subject and predicate are the walls and roof that hold everything together. Once you have this foundation, you can begin adding details to make your sentences stronger, clearer, and more interesting.
Be sure to provide opportunities for students to identify subjects and predicates. Then, have them develop their own subjects and predicates to start sentences.
Student practice should be scaffolded. Complete a few examples together; then, students can work with a partner. Finally, have students practice independently.
Paperless Student Practice!
In this resource, you’ll find over 140 student practice slides for your Developing Sentences unit! With dedicated practice for each part of the Developing Sentences learning process: subject & predicate, adding details, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, checking for clarity, and putting it all together!
3. Teach students to add details.
For the next step of developing sentences, begin by introducing the concept to your students. This step—Add details—requires students to expand their sentences by including descriptive elements such as adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases. Keep in mind that some students may need supplemental instruction on specific components of this step, such as identifying parts of speech or understanding how to use them effectively.
Say to students: For the second step of Developing Sentences, we’re going to learn how to add details to make our sentences more interesting. This means using adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases to paint a clearer picture for our readers. If you’re unsure about any of these, don’t worry—we’ll review what you need to know as we go!
After introducing Step Two, assess your students’ understanding of adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. This is very important to their success in adding details. Are they able to easily identify and use those parts of speech? Or do they need additional instruction on one or more of the components before putting them into practice?
IF STUDENTS NEED ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTION:
- Teach each part of speech separately.
- Include practice for using the part of speech.
- Revisit the Developing Sentences Anchor Chart or Slide to connect the part of speech back to the steps of developing a sentence.
Teach Without the Prep!
In this resource, you’ll find over 300 teaching slides for your Developing Sentences unit! With step-by-step lesson slides and shared practice activities.
Supplemental parts of speech instruction and practice are included, too!
When students understand the parts of speech, it’s time to explicitly teach them how to add details effectively. Return your attention to the Step Two: Add Details anchor chart.
Now, we can teach students how to develop a sentence by adding details to a subject and predicate in the following order:
- Adjectives
- Adverbs
- Prepositions
Say to students: Now that we understand adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions, we’re ready to use these parts of speech to add details to our sentences. Adding details is an important part of developing sentences because it gives readers the information they need to visualize and understand what we’re writing. Today, we’ll practice this step—adding details—to make our sentences clear, descriptive, and engaging!
Have students practice adding details with digital and printable activities. Consider using a sentence-building activity like the one above! Students can physically move details to complete the sentence. This is a helpful activity because as students add details to the subject and predicate, they can adjust the order of the sentence to make sure it makes sense.
*All activities pictured above can be found in the Developing Sentences Printable Resource.
4. Teach students to check for clarity.
Once students have learned how to develop sentences by adding details, it’s time to focus on the final step: Checking for clarity. This means making sure each sentence makes sense, is easy to understand, and paints a clear picture for the reader. Teaching this step helps students develop strong writing habits and communicate their ideas effectively.
Say to students: When developing sentences, we must make sure everything is understandable. So, this is the last step of developing sentences: Check for clarity. Even sentences with lots of detail can lose their meaning if they’re confusing or unclear. A clear sentence includes all necessary details and makes sense.
Teach students to read sentences (aloud or in their head) and ask themselves the following questions:
- Does my sentence have a subject and a predicate?
- Did I add enough detail to paint a clear picture?
- Does it make sense when I read it out loud?
- Is the message easy to understand?
Students need experience applying this skill with developed sentences. Include activities that have BOTH good and bad examples of developed sentences. Students will build the skill with practice and be able to identify when sentences are clear.
Don’t Miss Out!
Don’t miss out on the printable resources and activities in this Practice Resource!
You’ll find teacher guides, anchor charts, task cards, cut-and-paste activities, student checks, writing prompts, and more!
5. Developing Sentences: Putting it all together!
After teaching each step of developing sentences—starting with a subject and predicate, adding details, and checking for clarity—it’s time for students to put it all together and practice. This final step is essential because it allows students to apply everything they’ve learned in a meaningful way. Practicing the full process helps writers see all steps work together to create clear, detailed, and engaging sentences.
When having students practice these steps, encourage them to write every part of the process. Provide an example of this process like the following:
- The pillow sits.
- The fluffy white pillow sits.
- The fluffy white pillow sits neatly.
- The fluffy white pillow sits neatly on the cozy armchair by the window.
YAY! This 5-step method should get your students to sentence development mastery!
All of the information in this blog post can be found in my FREE Developing Sentences How-to-Teach Guide. Opt in below to have it emailed directly to you.