Parent Tips: Practice 1.3.1

Wknight94, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Adults generally take it for granted that sentences are the building blocks of formal writing, but this was not always a given. Kids will have a deeper appreciation of the power and importance of sentences if we talk about why we use sentences in modern English writing in addition to the rules of sentence construction. Here are some questions to discuss with your child: why do English speakers like to know who is doing what? What would be other ways to organize our thoughts? What are the cultural assumptions underneath the grammatical concepts? Yes, the concept of a sentence seems simple, but it is ripe for deep conversation no matter the age of your student(s).