Classifying Sentences

I am always looking for cute anchor charts to use in my classroom, and fun mini-lessons to go with them. Pinterest is full of awesome ideas! I am slightly addicted to the world of pinning. In the past, I have used many of their ideas, but this week I can up with an anchor chart and mini-lesson of my own.

This past week we were studying the four different types of sentences; statement, question, exclamation, and command. I introduced the different types of sentences to my students with a quick hands-on activity and matching anchor chart. While discussing the types of sentences, I took my chart paper and divided it into four equal rectangular sections, wrote a different sentence type, and punctuation used in each section.

I then gave each of my students four different picture cards. The cards had pictures that represented each sentence type. The command card had a picture of a general, the statement card had a cartoon of a bored smiley face, the question card had a cartoon of Curious George, and the exclamation card had a cartoon of someone shouting. I glued the matching sample cards in the middle of each section on my anchor chart (see picture below). We discussed why each picture was used to represent each sentence type.

Next, I read my students a series of sentences. After each sentence, they had to raise the picture card they thought best represented that sentence. This gave us time to discuss each sentence, and what clues were given to help them figure out the sentence type. We discussed tone and words used at the beginning of questions like, who, what, when, where, how, and why.

To assess their learning, I gave each student four sticky notes. They had to write an example of a question, command, statement, and exclamation on each sticky note. Once they had finished their writing, they had to place each sticky note in the correct section of the anchor chart. Finally, we reviewed our anchor chart and checked to see if our sentences were correctly placed.

We keep this anchor chart on display in our classroom to help us during our writing workshop. If you like this lesson, I have posted this mini-lesson, picture cards, sample sentences, and quiz on my TpT store. What other strategies to you use while teaching sentence types in your classroom?