Here’s a method I came up with on my own, although I’m sure others have thought of it before. My son, Matthew, is in second grade, and he has been having trouble seeing the difference between an asking sentence and a telling sentence. In his PACEs, he is supposed to supply a period or a question mark to the complete sentences, and he’s been consistently getting it wrong. So we needed to stop and work on this concept before we could go on.
I tried to understand why he thought a declarative sentence sounded to him like a question. I found that it was the inflection in his voice that made him think of a question. My guess is that it is due to our American laziness in grammar. Many times we do ask a question without arranging the sentence order to match. You will see what I mean in the video below.
My solution was to try removing the inflection in his voice by getting him to say the sentence like a robot. It worked! He gets it right much more often now. We did a little more practice with this, using some worksheets I found online (I posted them on my Pinterest Page). Then Matthew got an A on his English test. Success! I hope this helps you homeschool moms if you are having trouble in this area as well.
Please share in the comments any other methods that may have worked for you!
Asking and Telling Sentences from Rebekah Schrepfer on Vimeo.
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