Complete and Simple Subject and Predicate

These are foundation skills as well. It is very beneficial for students to be able to recognize complete subject and predicate because later on, if you've established the habit of dividing the sentence with a slash, students can be told that certain things can only be on the left side (on the subject side) or on the right side (the predicate side). When it comes to finding simple subject and predicate, if you've put the slash first, you will find that often they "hug the line." Adjectives and prepositional phrases which modify the subject tend to come before the simple subject (SS) and adverbs and prepositional phrases which modify the verb tend to come after the simple predicate (SP). A couple of other tips when it comes to these skills: for younger students (middle school), simply recognizing a complete sentence can be a challenge, so always have them first establish that they are working with a complete sentence. Additionally, another foundation skill, is the ability to make sure sentence is in normal (I also say "natural") order (subject before predicate). That skill in and of itself takes some practice, but work with students on the approximately four ways a sentence may not follow normal structure: a question, an imperative, starting with a prepositional phrase, and starting with here or there.