Sentence Type

Week of January 20, 2013—Syntax Needn’t Be Taxing

Wednesday, January 23— Sentence Type

This year at school our fourth graders have participated in GPS Class on Mondays.

G-Grammar, P-Punctuation, and S-Spelling. Sadly these topics haven’t been taught

directly to lots of children for years (and their writing shows it). Suddenly our

students are expected to excel in these areas, but teachers have little or no

curriculum to use to teach the topics. So we’ve been developing our own

curriculum as we go through the year and spot the needs of our students. One of

their needs, is one of the important parts of syntax—knowing and using effectively 

different types of sentences and knowing how to punctuate them correctly.

Think back to your grammar instruction and you’ll probably be able to recall the

four kinds of sentences.

§  Declarative—A declarative sentence makes a statement and is followed by a period.

Example:     The neighbor’s dog is barking again.

§  Imperative—A command or polite request followed by a period or an exclamation mark.

                              Example:     Please close the door. (Polite request.)

                              Get over here now! (Command)

§  Exclamatory—An exclamatory sentence expresses great excitement or emotion. It ends with an exclamation mark.

Example:     The British are coming!

§  Interrogative—An interrogative sentence asks a question and ends with a question mark.

Example: Is this your house?

A quick glance at our book of the week—The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr.

Morris Lessmore by William Joyce—reveals no exclamation points or question

marks, so we can infer that the sentences in this book are all declarative or

imperative. With closer examination, I found only declarative sentences.

When I examine Cat Secrets by Jef Czekaj I found periods, question marks, and

question marks—we truly see declarative, imperative, exclamatory, and

interrogative sentences in this book. Why the difference? I think it probably goes

back to tone. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore has a more serious

and warm-hearted tone, while Cat Secrets is more playful, with wacky humor. The

sentences used in each picture book fit the need of the story. The same should be

true in our writing.

A warning about exclamation marks—Jef Czekaj could get away with using lots of

exclamation points in Cat Secrets. You and I have to be careful with those little

end marks. A little dab will do ya when it comes to exclamation marks.

There are, of course, other types of sentences—simple, compound, and complex

sentences. Since most picture books tend to not venture into the world of

compound and complex sentences all that much, I’m not going to delve into them

here. But a great online resource that explains each of these types of sentences can

be found at: http://www.eslbee.com/sentences.htm.