One of the reasons that kindergarten is such a fun grade level to teach is that students grow exponentially in their literacy skills! It’s so rewarding to watch students go from identifying only a handful of letters to reading sentences all in the course of one school year. In this post, I’m going to share some fun sentence practice for kindergarten that you can use to keep up the momentum of this literacy progress!
Getting Ready for Sentence Practice
Before you break out the sentence practice activities, it’s important to make sure that your students are ready for this step. Are they comfortable reading CVC words and sight words in isolation? Do they know how to read from left to right? Have they learned what a sentence is? Are they familiar with the basic conventions of sentences?
If your students are ready to start reading sentences, I have a fun activity that they’ll love! It incorporates many different skills in one activity, which helps your students become even more familiar with sentences.
Fun Sentence Practice for Kindergarten
This sentence scramble activity has always been a favorite with kindergarten students who are ready to practice sentences. Here are the different sentence skills that students are able to practice with this one low-prep activity.
1. Read the Individual Words in the Sentence
First, students are able to review the words that are in the sentence. This activity has a strip of word cards that need to be cut out. The words are scrambled, so students won’t be reading the words as a sentence quite yet.
As they cut out the words, they can read each CVC word and sight word. It’s fun to watch their gears turn as they think of how these words will fit together into a sentence!
2. Unscramble the Sentence
The next step is for students to unscramble the sentence. This is a great opportunity for students to review sentence structure because there are some clues on the word cards!
They can find the first word of the sentence by looking for the word with a capital letter. They can find the last word of the sentence by looking for the word card with a punctuation mark. From there, it’s easy for them to put the sentence in order. There is also a model sentence on the page that students can use to help them assemble each sentence.
3. Read the Sentence
Once the sentence has been unscrambled and glued down, students can read the completed sentence again. This is a great opportunity for them to practice their fluency by reading the sentence smoothly. They can even practice using inflection for sentences that ask a question.
4. Write the Sentence
The sentence practice doesn’t end there! After students have had a chance to read the sentence, they can write it on the line provided. Any time we can add extra fine motor practice to the school day is a win!
5. Read Multiple Sentences
These scrambled sentences come in a printable book with five different sentences. This gives students the chance to read multiple sentences at a time! They love to flip through the pages and show off how they can read a book!
You can also have students practice reading the sentences even more fluently by having them read the five sentences on one page. This gives them the chance to practice reading multiple lines of text at a time, moving from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This is another great way to make your students feel like readers!
When to Use Kindergarten Sentence Practice
The best part of this kindergarten sentence practice activity is that you can use it throughout your daily learning routine. You can choose the time that works best for you and your students!
- Morning Work: Since each of these sentence scramble books follows the same pattern, students will know what to do as soon as they see it. This makes it a great option for morning work time! Students can sit down and get right to work on their sentence activity.
- Literacy Centers: Speaking of independent work, this sentence practice activity is also a great option for literacy centers. Students are able to complete the sentence scrambles with minimal assistance.
- Small Group Instruction: This activity is perfect for small groups! You can select which sight word you’d like each group to focus on for targeted instruction.
- Homework: These sentence scrambles can also be a fun option for homework! You can encourage students to keep practicing sentences at home. Even if you ultimately decide to complete this activity at school, students can take the completed books home to share with their families.
- Early Finishers: You can staple multiple sentence sheets together for students to practice as they wait for the next classroom activity to begin.
No matter how you decide to use this activity in your classroom, your students will grow more confident in their reading and writing skills as they complete this sentence practice.
Printable Sentence Scrambles
Does this look like a sentence practice activity that your students would love? I’ve put together a set of 50 printable books that you can use to help your students practice sentences in a fun way. Each book has five different sentences, so your students are sure to get plenty of practice with unscrambling, reading, and writing sentences! Each of the 50 books focuses on a specific sight word and it comes in two different sizes. This allows you to tailor this activity for your group of students.
If you’d like to take a closer look at everything included in this bundle of printable sentence scrambles, just click below to find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.
Save This Fun Sentence Practice for Kindergarten
Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite kindergarten literacy board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find this fun activity when your students are ready to practice sentences!