{"id":5082,"date":"2025-01-05T18:53:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T23:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/?p=5082"},"modified":"2025-01-05T19:03:39","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T00:03:39","slug":"how-to-teach-clauses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itslitteaching.com\/how-to-teach-clauses\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Teach Clauses to High Schoolers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I became a high school teacher, I was SHOCKED at how many of my students wrote incomplete sentences. It took years for me to figure out the answer to this problem: teach clauses.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teaching clauses helps students understand the relationship between nouns and verbs, subjects and predicates, and different parts of sentences. It gives them the vocabulary to understand why<\/em> a sentence doesn’t work and to explain why it does. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, I’m going to cover the steps to teaching clauses (or at least what worked for me). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to save yourself a ton of time, you can grab my Clauses and Sentence Types Lesson<\/a>, which dives deep into clauses, right here. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Pinterest pin that reads, \"How To Teach Clauses To High Schoolers\" above an image of a hand writing in a book<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Teach Clauses Step #1: Make Sure Students Understand Subjects and Predicates<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Before you can teach clauses, you need to make sure students understand subjects and predicates. <\/p>\n\n\n

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This set of assessments<\/a> includes three aligned grammar tests–perfect for before, at the halfway point, and at the end of your grammar instruction.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

And before students can understand subjects and predicates, they need to understand nouns and verbs. Ouch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I always recommend beginning your grammar unit or curriculum with some kind of assessment. This can be a test or a writing sample but know where your students are starting from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Want some help figuring out where to begin? Check out this post about how to sequence your grammar instruction.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re teaching high school, I do not recommend going all the way back to teaching all of the types of parts of speech. You’ll just lose too much time. Instead, do a quick recap of nouns and verbs. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, build up to subjects and predicates. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you need a lesson that does all of this, my Parts of a Sentence Lesson<\/a> reviews nouns and verbs before covering subjects and predicates. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n