Review sentence structure, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Remind students that a sentence must have a complete thought including a subject, which performs an action, and a predicate, the action performed. For example, a complete sentence might be, "The dog chased the ball." An example of an incomplete sentence might be, "The furry, black dog" (no predicate) or "Ran around in circles" (no subject). Give students practice identifying complete sentences and incomplete sentences. Have them complete any incomplete sentences, Ensure that students use proper capitalization and punctuation.
Introduce paragraphs by telling students that paragraphs you want them to write should contain five sentences about one topic. Tell students to indent the first line of a paragraph five spaces. The first sentence tells about the topic. The next three provide additional information about the topic. The last sentence wraps up the subject and concludes the topic.
Show students examples with topic sentences, middle sentences and closing sentences to illustrate paragraphs. Point out each part of the paragraphs, including the indentations.
Write a topic sentence on the chalkboard. Encourage the students to copy the sentence, then create their own paragraphs with middle and closing sentences. Repeat with several topic sentences until students become familiar with paragraph construction and adept at writing paragraphs.
Have students practice daily. Write a prompt every day on the chalkboard. For example, "Tell about your favorite dessert." Have students write a complete paragraph using the prompt. Make sure students write five-sentence paragraphs and correct the paragraphs for grammar, spelling, punctuation and sentence structure.