5 Sentence Structure & Sentence Types Activities

If your students can’t remember what an interrogative sentence is, or think a complex sentence is just one that looks “complicated”, you’re far from alone. Sentence types and structures can be tricky to keep straight, especially when students are juggling clauses, conjunctions, and grammar. With the right kind of practice, though, identifying and writing various types of sentences becomes second nature. I’m sharing some of my favorite sentence structure and sentence type activities that are easy to prep, while still challenging students’ skills.

Sentence Structure and Sentence Type Activities

I’m all about creating activities that are engaging and get the job done without taking hours to prep. That’s why I’m a big fan of these sentence-type activities. Personally, I love turning them into stations (check out my Sentence Stations resource), but they also work well as stand-alone activities.

#1 Book Scavenger Hunt

I love using mentor sentences. Students are able to see good writing in action, which makes it easier for them to apply. So why not bring that into sentence practice as well? Have students use a class text or their independent reading to hunt for various sentences. For example, ask them to find two compound sentences or four declarative sentences. Students will then search through the text to find examples.

Add another layer to this activity by having students share how they know it’s compound or declarative. What punctuation or conjunctions gave it away? You can find this book scavenger hunt activity inside my Sentence Stations resource.

#2 Sentence Building Game

This is a super simple sentence structure activity, and it’s hands-on. Give students a dice and prompts for each number. For example, if they roll a six, they have to write a subject. If they roll a five, they have to use a subordinating conjunction. Students will roll two or three times. Then, using the prompts, they’ll write a unique sentence.

Once their sentence has been written, students will identify what kind of sentence it is. Is it compound? Declarative? You can even change the dice prompts, like rolling a 3 means writing a complex sentence.

#3 Matching Sentence Types

One of my go-to sentence type activities is matching. It’s easy to put together, and you can mix up the types of sentences you use. Essentially, students will have four categories: declarative, interrogative, imperative, and exclamatory. Then, they’ll sort out sentences on task cards or slips of paper into those categories. You can also do this with sentence structure, just change the categories to simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex.

Use the ready-to-go matching activity inside the Sentence Stations resource, or craft your own sentences. You can find sentences from your class novel for students to sort as well.

#4 Sentence Transformation

Your students really understand sentence structure and sentence type when they can craft their own sentences – proper grammar and all. With this sentence type activity, you’ll give students a pre-written sentence. They’ll then manipulate it to fit a new sentence type or sentence structure.

For example, an interrogative sentence (Where is my red shoe?) could be rewritten as a declarative sentence (There is my red shoe.). Or turning a simple sentence (I have a new dress.) into a complex sentence (After a trip to the store, I have a new dress.).

#5 Reader’s Theater

Turn a book (or a movie) into a play with this sentence type activity. Personally, I like students to draw inspiration from our class novel, but independent books or even movies work too. Students will write the dialogue between two characters in the story. The challenge is that they have to use different sentence structures or sentence types when they are writing.

In the Sentence Stations resource, I have students use at least one example of each sentence structure or sentence type, but you can adjust these rules to fit your needs.

Middle School Sentences Stations

Create your sentence structure and sentence type activities from scratch, or grab the done-for-you Sentence Stations. This resource includes eight low-prep stations in both print and digital. Plus, I’ve included a sentence mini-unit, so you can teach or review the various sentence types and structures with students.

The Sentence Stations include –