Teach students the difference between simple and compound sentences. Explain that simple sentences include a subject and a verb. Simple sentences might have compound subjects or verbs and can include prepositional phrases. However, they communicate a single thought without additional clauses. Compound sentences are comprised of two independent clauses, or clauses that could stand on their own as simple sentences because they have both a subject and a verb. These clauses are combined using a coordinating conjunction or semicolon to create a compound sentence.
Teach students about coordinating conjunctions. Explain that coordinating conjunctions are used to combine two independent clauses. This turns two simple sentences into one compound sentence. Coordinating conjunctions are "so," "but," "and," "yet," "nor," "for" and "or." These words are always preceded by a comma when combining two independent clauses. For example, the sentences "I like to play most sports" and "Volleyball is my favorite sport" can be combined using the coordinating conjunction "but." The new sentence is: "I like to play most sports, but volleyball is my favorite."
Teach students to combine sentences using a semicolon. Combining sentences with a semicolon is not common, but there are occasions to use this technique. For example, "The fire consumed the building; the tenants lost everything."
Have students practice combining sentences using sentence strips. Write simple sentences on different sentence strips. Cut blank sentence strips into smaller pieces to make a set of coordinating conjunction and semicolon strips. Have students work alone or in pairs to create compound sentences from two simple sentences and a coordinating conjunction or semicolon. Have students write the new compound sentence on a separate strip, adding the semicolon, or the comma before the coordinating conjunction and adding or removing words as needed.