Developed by Pip St John

Sentence Builders (Word Docs in Zip file, will download to your computer)

Sentence builders are made for both fiction and non-fiction texts and can be a springboard for teachers to create their own. The sentence builders specifically aim to reduce the pressure on children to be able to create and construct their ideas into a written form without the worry of whether they can spell and/or recall any of the key words. There are further blank sentence builders on which children can input the information from text themselves.

Sentence builders can support language development across the curriculum and provide and model a sentence frame on the whiteboard or a wall. Encourage learners to use the frame for speaking and in writing: e.g. to make predictions, offer cause effect statements, describe a process etc.

This file contains:

• The Treasure Hunt
• The Pirates Next `foor
• Tree Fu Tom writing grid
• Three Billy Goats Gruff
• The Egyptian Cinderella basic writing grid
• Mama Panya’s Pancakes sentence builder
• Lost and Found sentence builder
• Handa’s Surprise sentence builder
• Fantastic Mr Fox basic writing grid
• Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs Y1
• Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone Y4
• Maximus and the Bean Stalk Y5
• 3 Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig writing grid

The Sentence Builders also provides different levels of differentiation for the class teacher:

• As a complete frame with all topic words (including lots of verbs) to support direct writing in the classroom;
• A blank sentence builder frame for children to interact with the text and select specific information (good old DARTs activity for those who can remember that far back!) – this could be the outcome for a few children and show their understanding at their level;
• This child-generated sentence builders can then be the scaffold for them to re-tell one (or more) sentences – again for some children this is their outcome in the classroom;
• A further extension for the child, after oral rehearsal, is to generate a written sentence (or sentences) using their sentence builders.