Sentence Openers: Lessons & Worksheets

Definition of a Sentence Opener

A Sentence Opener begins to paint a picture in the reader's mind and grabs their attention by drawing them into the composition. When a writer uses a verb, plural noun, collective noun or a preposition to start their sentence they are using sentence openers.

The writing activities, games, examples, lists, charts of openers and worksheets will develop your child's writing skills and strategies. The writing skills that your child learns at Helping With Writing will transfer over to all of their writing of introductions, essays, references, thesis', resumes, research papers and any other compositions that they tackle.

Definitions, Examples and Seven Lessons are presented here in each of the four sections.

Here are the four sections of Sentence Opener Lessons;

• Collective Nouns
• Noun Openers
• Preposition Openers
• Verb Openers

Guidance on Helping Your Children

A good routine to establish with your children is as follows:

• Find a quiet table or a desk for your children to work at (no TV or games) and provide your children with materials like pens, pencils, erasers, dictionary, thesaurus, and paper.
• Watch the Mini-Movie and read the lesson.
• Print off a worksheet and discuss the instructions together.
• Once they have finished the worksheet, tell your children to check over their work. Get them to proof read, always. Re-read every question as if they were doing the worksheet for the first time. This is an excellent habit to get into as they will develop proof reading skills that will transfer over to all their writing pieces. Most mistakes are found by the author.
• Your conversation with your children might go something like this;
  • "Let's check this over."
  • If there are any mistakes, fix them. Make corrections accordingly as you do want your children to be learning the wrong skills.
  • "Look at your answer here. How can you change it to better answer the question?" (Guide your children down the garden path).
  • "I would change this answer to this." By you giving them some other choices, they will learn that there are other answers.
• Start Keeping a Notebook - Throughout the website there are suggestions and teaching instructions on when your child may want to write in their notebook to help improve their literacy and English Grammar.
• Celebrate their successes. "Well done!"