Every sentence has a job to do: it tells us that someone or something does something. On Sentence Summit, Year 4 writers learn to find the subject, the verb and the object — the skeleton that holds every sentence up.
What your child will learn
- Find the subject: who or what the sentence is about
- Find the verb and the predicate: what the subject does or is
- Find the object: who or what receives the action
- Tell a complete sentence from a fragment
Who did what to what?
Take “Sam kicked the ball.” Ask “Who kicked?” — Sam is the subject. “Did what?” — kicked is the verb. “Kicked what?” — the ball is the object. The predicate is everything that is said about the subject: “kicked the ball”.
Fragments
A fragment is a piece of a sentence that can’t stand alone because it is missing its subject or its verb, or leaves the thought unfinished. “Running down the hill.” — who was? “Because it was late.” — what happened?
Example questions
Here are a few questions like the ones in the first quest. Can you solve them?
1. What is the verb in “Mia paints pictures.”?
- Mia
- Mia paints
- paints
- pictures
Show answer
Answer: paints. Paints is what Mia does.
2. What is the subject in “My sister rides a bike.”?
- My sister
- a bike
- rides a bike
- rides
Show answer
Answer: My sister. My sister is the one who rides.
3. Which of these is a complete sentence?
- On the mat.
- Sat on the mat.
- The cat sat on the mat.
- The fluffy cat.
Show answer
Answer: The cat sat on the mat.. It has a subject (the cat) and a verb (sat).
Tips for grown-ups
- Pick a sentence from a book and ask the three questions: who? did what? to what?
- Play “finish the fragment”: one person says a fragment, the other makes it a full sentence.
- Underline subjects in one colour and verbs in another.