Developed by Pip St John

Sentence Builders (PDF, 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.

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:

• Tree Fu Tom sentence builder
• Mama Panya’s Pancakes sentence builder
• Lost and Found sentence builder
• Handa’s Surprise sentence builder
• Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs Y1
• Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone Y4
• Esio Trot sentence builder

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;
• 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.