If your upper-elementary students struggle to write complete sentences, you’ll love the Red Pen Crime Scene: Sentence Fragments activity. After swearing in your newest Grammar Police Detectives, your students will visit 10 different crime scenes to solve grammar crimes. Their mission? To catch 4 devious fragments posing as complete sentences hiding amid short paragraphs by checking each sentence for both the subject and predicate. Once they’ve cornered the 4 culprits, your students will repair the damage done by fixing each of the fragments. It's great for grammar, writing, and revision practice!

The Mission?

• Find 4 sentence fragments in each of the 10 short texts

• Differentiate between a complete sentence or a fragment

• Identify the missing subject and predicate

• Know how to fix fragments by supplying missing information or combining clauses

• Eliminate run-on habits and sentence fragments in their independent writing

Here’s what’s included:

• 10 printable cases to be solved (comes in half-page or full-page size)

• Student digital slideshow with directions and all 10 cases

• Official Grammar Police: Master Case Log

• Printable magnifying glasses, detective badges, credentials, case file labels

• Printable Answer Key

• Digital slideshow for teachers with student directions, cases, and answer keys

NOTE: This is a zip file download. Both slideshows can be opened in Google Slides or PowerPoint.

In My Own Classroom . . .

My 4th and 5th grade students usually have no problem identifying a statement as either a fragment or complete sentence. They can even fix a fragment given to them. But find a fragment in the context of a text? Way harder! This is the activity that will help them go beyond basics and help students begin to edit their own writing. Soon your students will be writing in complete sentences and fixing their own fragments.

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Sentence Fragments Grammar Activity BUNDLE Fix Fragments in Texts: Grades 3-6

Fragments and Run-On Sentences Bundle: Grammar Activities & Practice 4th-6th Gr.

I'd love to hear how you use this resource in your classroom! Feel free to email me at iteachiwrite@yahoo.com with any questions or suggestions you may have.

Copyright © iTeach & iWrite by Betsy Newmeyer.

All rights reserved by the author.

Permission to use for single classroom use only.