Writing Complete Sentences Lesson

What Makes a Complete Sentence?

A sentence must tell a whole thought. To do that, every sentence needs two main parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject tells who or what the sentence is about. The predicate tells what the subject does or is.

For example, in the sentence “My friend Rosa came to my house,” the subject is My friend Rosa — it tells who the sentence is about. The predicate is came to my house — it tells what Rosa did.

A group of words that is missing a subject or a predicate is called a sentence fragment. Fragments do not express a complete thought and are considered incomplete sentences. For example, “Ran to the store” is a fragment because it has no subject. “The big red barn” is a fragment because it has no predicate.

Writing Your Own Complete Sentences

When writing a complete sentence, start by deciding what your sentence is about (the subject) and then decide what you want to say about it (the predicate). Put them together and you have a complete sentence.

A sentence always begins with a capital letter. It ends with an end mark: a period (.), a question mark (?), or an exclamation point (!). Statements end with a period. Questions end with a question mark. Sentences showing strong emotion end with an exclamation point.

Writing clear, complete sentences is a foundational skill for all writing. When students master subjects, predicates, and sentence completeness, they are better prepared to write paragraphs, essays, and longer pieces. This worksheet gives students guided practice identifying sentence parts and writing their own complete sentences.

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