A first draft is never the last one. Read yours cold, then find the sentences that never finished.
Not started yet.
Students will check their story draft from Lesson 9 against a checklist, learn to identify and fix sentence fragments, and then revise the draft on paper.
Revising means improving a draft after it's written. A complete sentence has a subject and a predicate and makes a complete thought. A fragment is missing a subject, a predicate, or a complete thought. There are three ways to fix one: add the missing subject, add the missing predicate, or join the fragment to the sentence next to it.
Fragments are fine on purpose in dialogue, because people talk that way, but the narration should be complete.
Students think any sentence that starts with Because or And is wrong in general, or they miss fragments that begin with a subject, like The old dog by the door. A fragment that has a subject and a verb but starts with a word like because still isn't a complete thought. Ask what happened to the dog by the door, since that's the missing predicate.
Do the practice questions first, then have the student read his draft aloud to you and stop at every sentence that sounds unfinished. Reading aloud finds fragments his eyes skip. The revision is graded on completion: a marked-up draft and a clean copy.
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Before You Start
The words this lesson uses. Tap a card to see what it means, then come back to them whenever a question uses one.
Part One
Questions about the story you just read. Pick your answer straight off, or press Find it in the story if you would rather hunt for the sentence first.
Part Two
The word cards are at the top of this page. Look back at them as often as you need, then answer.