One of the most important skills first grade authors should acquire is to identify a complete sentence.  In order to do this, we need to know the magic formula to make a sentence.  We learned this week that every sentence needs a naming part (subject) and a telling part (predicate.)  If we’re missing either of those, we know we don’t have a complete sentence.

To illustrate this point, we watched this classic Schoolhouse Rock video about Mr. Morton:

After some practice writing complete sentences of our own in our journals about what we did over the summer, we were ready for some sentence surgery!

It’s important to wear proper attire when when performing surgery, so we put on gloves and face masks.  Then, we went to “medical school.”  I gave the students some color coded sentences on sentence strips and instructed them to use scissors and tape to perform a naming-part transplant.  The students quickly identified where the naming part of each sentence ended and the telling part began.  Then, they use scissors to carefully cut the sentence apart.  Finally, they traded naming parts with a friend to create a new, silly sentence.

Once everyone graduated from medical school, it was time to create and treat their own “patients.”  Each student used sentence strips to write a complete sentence.  Then, they cut their own sentence apart and traded with a friend before using tape as stitches to create a whole new sentence!