4th Grade Lesson Plan: Correcting Run Ons and Fragments

Lesson Objective: Students will able to identify and correct run ons and fragments and understand the use of and, but, for and so.

Lesson Opening

1. Ask them to tell me about all the different times they have had to write over the last three weeks in school and about all the times in everyday life. There will be a lot of answers and I will put them on the board.

1. As we talk, I will hand out my cards with words and numbers on them.

Guided Practice

1. Next I will bring them to the floor. For about ten minutes they will stand above me and provide me with cards. This is an interactive lesson. It worked well last time, so hopefully this will work with more sophisticated material.

1. Each child will have a card that belongs in a specific place. When I call the number of their card, they will place it where it ought to go. Together, we will build sentences and learn about punctuation and correcting run ons and fragments.

1. Today, however, I want to go a step forward. I want them to understand how to use conjunctions to combine sentences and to understand when you can use them and when you shouldn't.

Independent Practice

1. The children will go back to their desks and work independently on the sheets that I will hand out.

1. If there is time, they will work in pairs, writing run on sentences and fragments for each other and then fixing them.

Closing

1. Ask them to say sentences that have no punctuation. They always find this funny and it serves a purpose.