Complex and Compound Sentences

Teaching Ideas

Lesson Objective: To use a variety of sentences when writing

• To recognise compound and complex sentences.
Success Criteria:
• To use compound and complex sentences accurately in own writing.

You
could use this lesson to introduce complex and compound sentences or you could use it as a re-cap of existing
knowledge. Once you have taught this lesson, you could use Complex Sentences Revision Sheet at a later date to
reinforce complex sentences learning.

Starter
What's Wrong?
Pupils are presented with a passage written entirely in simple sentences. They must say what is wrong with the
passage and perhaps what they might do to improve it.

Main Activities
Simple Sentences
This slide presents a quick explanation of simple sentences and their effect on writing if used too often.

How Do We Fix It?

Now compound and complex sentences are presented as a solution to this problem. You could ask at this point if
anyone already knows what these two types of sentence are.

Compound Sentences
This slide explains what a compound sentence is and what conjunctions are.

Your Turn
There are four sets of two simple sentences which pupils should turn into compound sentences. The conjunctions
are provided on a table on the slide, but this comes in with a click so you can leave it out if it is not needed. This
work can be done on the Activity Sheet Compound and Complex Sentences there is a HA (higher ability) and LA
(lower ability) sheet available. Alternatively, you could use the board and exercise books. Also for lower ability
groups, you may want to use Make Your Own Compound Sentences which is a set of simple sentences, conjunctions
and punctuation which can be cut up into cards. Pupils can then join the simple sentences using the conjunctions
and indicate where they would put capital letters and full stops. You can have some fun with this, if you mix the
sentences up, they will make nonsense sentences – you could have a prize for the silliest!

Complex Sentences
This is an explanation of a complex sentence, introducing the main and subordinate clauses. This is also represented
visually using font sizes, to show that the main clause is the most important one and the subordinate clause less
important but giving extra information.

You Try
Pupils try their hand at identifying the main and subordinate clauses in five separate sentences. These are on
Activity Sheet Compound and Complex Sentences or could be written in books.

Photo courtesy of Fredrik Rubensson (@flickr.com) - granted under creative commons licence - attribution
Commas and Complex Sentences
Hopefully, by doing the previous task, pupils would see that the subordinate clause can go at the beginning, end and
in the middle of a sentence. An example of this is given just in case! Pupils are asked to look at the differences in the
commas, according the position of the subordinate clause. They can probably work out the ‘rule’ for themselves.

Commas and Complex Sentences 2

A full explanation of the commas ‘rule’ to make this clear. It is worth saying though, that like everything else in
English, this isn’t a hard and fast rule and that sometimes, even when the subordinate clause is on the end of a
sentence, it uses a comma.

Compound Sentences
This slide explains what a compound sentence is and what conjunctions are.

Your Turn
Pupils are asked to put the comma into 8 sentences, these are also on LA/HA Activity Sheet Compound and
Complex Sentences.

Try it Out
Pupils now return to the passage they read at the beginning of the lesson. Their task is to rewrite it using compound
and complex sentences to make it more exciting for the reader. This is also on the LA/HA Activity Sheet Compound
and Complex Sentences. You could mark these yourself or ask pupils to swap books and give the writing a ‘what
went well’ and an ‘even better if’ target.

Plenary
Explain
Pupils are asked to write a guide for another pupil about different types of sentences. They are asked to explain the
key words which are listed on the slide and on the LA/HA Activity Sheet Compound and Complex Sentences.