Oh Snap! It's Almost September

Back to school is almost here, and it's a goal this year to get prepped and planned out better so I can spend as much time with my baby girl as possible. I'm pretty excited to have stumbled upon this linky this morning, if for nothing else than to keep myself looking ahead to the coming month and all that I need to do!

One of the classes I teach is writing {I'm departmentalized}, and the end of August/Beginning of September is reviewing and laying ground work for the rest of the year. Somehow, summer brain seems to take hold and the vast majority of my students seem to think words like "verbs, subjects, adjectives" etc. are foreign concepts. {I know both their former 3rd grade teachers and myself pull a little hair at the blank stares as I know these concepts have been taught before... thus the review!}

I read a book by Jeff Anderson a few years ago about mentor sentences and the writing process and he had several great ideas. One tricky concept, is remember subjects and predicates. Just having the long word predicate is tricky enough on it's own for many of my students to remember. Jeff had a great activity, "sentence slap" where students create the smallest sentences ever. We build from the simple subject and simple predicate to other parts of speech as we review simple sentences and go on to compound and complex sentences.

Students enjoyed being able to "slap" their sentences down on the black board.

We move on, talking about what makes up a simple sentence, what is a fragment, and the various types of sentences. I made up a review pack and recently updated it with a sentence spin game as well. Click here or the picture below to see more about this product.

From simple sentences we move on to the wonderful world compound and complex sentences; covering clauses and conjunctions along the way too. Each year I tweak things, prepping a little more, trying to make or find more resources that help with tricky concepts, and hopefully nip some problems in the bud before they truly blossom the following year. I've added more and tweaked to my simple,  compound, complex pack. You can check it out here or by clicking the picture below. There is also a set of posters only too if you'd rather.

One of my favorite resources, that combines my love of children's literature as well as spiraling back and reviewing parts of speech and sentences all year long, are mentor sentences from my good friend Jivey. To read more all about these and how to implement them, check out the post here.

What do you do to review/teach various types of sentences?