Help your primary students become confident and capable writers with these correcting sentences worksheets! Each activity is designed around a phonics-based skill to support early readers. They're perfect for small groups, independent practice, homework, and more!
Learning how to write with complete sentences is one thing; learning how to correct sentences is an entirely different skill! I love using sentence correcting worksheets and activities because they require students to think holistically about sentence structure, capitalisation, spelling, and more. They have to examine the sentences with a really attentive eye! This can, of course, be challenging at the beginning.
Fortunately, I've created a range of evidence-based 'fix the sentence' worksheets, activities and task cards to support them every step of the way! Each one is designed around a specific theme, so you can use them to scaffold your students throughout the year. This will ensure the task is never too overwhelming and meets your students exactly where they are.
Teaching Elementary Students to Correct Sentences
Naturally, we need to vary the types of resources we use based on our students' academic levels. Asking a kindergartener to look for independent clauses would not be developmentally appropriate, and a fifth grader likely already knows how to use finger spaces.
However, many elementary students struggle to write complete sentences, even in the upper grades. The concept is abstract and can be hard to understand.
My favourite tip is to teach that a complete sentence has one verb. For many simple sentences, that's true! Here's an example:
I rode the bike I had fun
If you can teach your students to find the verbs (rode and had), they can see that these are two distinct ideas and should be separate sentences. In the older grades, you'll need to teach different types of sentences and how to merge clauses together. This is a great start, though!
Kindergarten - 2nd Grade
Make sure your students have a copy of this Sentence Writing Editing Checklist! It's an excellent resource for young editors who are still learning the most important writing conventions, like the elements of a proper sentence. It also uses visuals, which are especially helpful to English Language Learners and early readers.
You're generally going to focus on the common errors students have at these grade levels, including:
- Checking for a complete thought
- Starting with a capital letter
- Using end punctuation (question marks, periods or full stops, and exclamation marks)
- Using finger spaces
- Looking for verbs
- Using WOW words (or adjectives/describing words)
Your students may also benefit from these Tricky Verbs posters, which make it easy to understand helping or auxiliary verbs and different verb tenses.
These free printable proper noun worksheets are a great way to practise capitalisation, too.
2nd Grade - 3rd Grade
Once students are able to write simple sentences, I recommend teaching the 6 Star Method.
It focuses on the six criteria students should look for when editing their own work.
6 Star Writing addresses:
- Checking for meaning (Does my writing make sense?)
- Using capital letters appropriately
- Punctuation (The emphasis in the early grades is on using any punctuation)
- Spelling
- Word usage (using colourful language like adjectives, adverbs, similes, etc)
You can teach this method using my 6 Star Editing Slide Deck...
... and practise it with this set of printable worksheets.
Each passage comes with three differentiated levels.
The worksheets include posters for your classroom, too!
4th Grade - 6th Grade
For older kids, you'll want to expand the lists above to cover more complex writing skills. The requirements become more specific in middle school and high school, but this is a good overview for our elementary students.
- Using proper punctuation (including identifying punctuation errors)
- Grammar errors (subject-verb agreement, inconsistent verb tense, etc)
- Check for sentence fragments and run-on sentences
- Use different types of sentences (simple, compound, and complex sentences)
Printable Correcting Sentences Worksheets for Elementary Students
The following activities are a great way to put those proofreading skills to the test! I created several different sentence editing task cards that have students correct mistakes while focusing on a specific phonics skill. This is a great way to consolidate several skills at the same time!
CVC, CVCC/CCVC, and Consonant Digraph Sentences
These fix the sentence task cards target some of the most common words students learn to read!
They assess high-frequency words (sight words), CVC words, CVCC/CCVC words, and consonant digraphs like th, ch, sh, and ll. The sentences also have spelling and punctuation errors for students to correct.
I like to use these as independent work during literacy stations or even in smaller groups, so we can target these skills together.
Here are some more examples of these task cards in action, this time focusing on consonant digraphs.
Long Vowel Sentence Correcting Activities
After CVC words and high-frequency words, long vowel sounds are one of the most essential phonics skills to teach in the early grades. Since the long vowels "say their name," they're also often easier to decode than more ambiguous short vowel sounds.
These long vowel sentence editing activities are a great resource for the primary grades in particular! You can teach them with your entire class as a morning activity or add them to your literacy centers.
Correcting Compound Sentence Activity
Once your students learn about different sentences, they're ready for these sentence correction task cards! They cover adding lists to sentences using commas and writing compound sentences.
Get all these resources and more
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All of the different worksheets and activities above are included, as well! Plus, there is a growing library of videos for teaching sentence editing!
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Resources for Writing Sentences
Teaching Sentences in Kindergarten
Best Printable Writing Prompts & Worksheets for Kindergarten
Kindergarten Writing Journals: Daily Journal Prompts & Tips
Free Printable Blank Handwriting Worksheets for Kindergarten