To begin writing complete sentences, children must first understand basic grammatical concepts. Many teachers spend a lot of time teaching students about subjects, verbs and objects, but the students are unable to combine these items into meaningful sentences. When teaching kids the parts of speech, make sure you demonstrate each part within the context of a full sentence. Ask students to pick out the verb and noun in each sentence. Give students examples of sentences that are missing an important part of speech and have them read them out loud so they can understand how strange incomplete sentences sound.
Many students start elementary school with little exposure to books and reading. This puts them at a disadvantage with writing. Spend time reading out loud to students every day and then have students read out loud in class. This helps students understand how well-formed sentences sound. This understanding is often learned best through modeling rather than direct instruction.
Mad Libs are paragraphs with verbs, nouns and adjectives omitted. Use Mad Libs to teach students the parts of speech and demonstrate how complete sentences sound. Without reading the paragraph to students, ask them to name a verb, a noun and other parts of speech and fill in students' suggestions. Then read the complete Mad Lib, which will almost certainly be funny, back to students. After doing so, omit the parts of speech students filled in and read the paragraph again. Students will be surprised at how ridiculous a paragraph full of sentence fragments sounds.
People frequently speak in sentence fragments, so students often struggle with the idea that a complete sentence contains a complete thought. Teach students that a proper sentence should say who did something, what they did and who or what they did it to. Whenever a student writes a sentence fragment, point out the missing component and ask the student to rewrite it.