Beginner Sentence Diagramming: Let's Learn the Parts of Speech!

I must admit, I don't think I truly remembered what the parts of speech were or how to identify them until I took a Linguistics class as a freshman in college where I learned how to diagram sentences. When I learned diagramming, something finally clicked, and I understood many patterns and rules of the English language that I had never fully comprehended before. Fortunately, you don't have to be a college freshman before you learn sentence diagramming. Diagramming starts out very basic with two word sentences, and you build on the sentences and add new parts of speech from there. I use the Reed-Kellogg version of sentence diagramming. 

When I tried to teach 8th grade language standards to the students I worked with in public school, they had no idea how to explain or identify gerunds or how to use verb moods because they didn't know what a noun and a verb were! We started at the beginning with sentence diagramming, and within a few weeks my students could identify nouns, verbs, articles, adjective, adverbs, prepositions, coordinating conjunctions, and compound sentences. It was amazing to see the progress they made through diagramming sentences for 5-10 minutes at the start of each class. Sentence diagramming is a more thorough way to learn the parts of speech because students MUST identify the function of each word in the sentence. This is not like a grammar workbook, where students learn the definition of a noun, and then must pick out all of the nouns in a sentence. Workbooks tend to teach the parts of speech in isolation. Sentence diagramming shows students how the parts of speech work together in a sentence to create patterns and meaning.

At the start of each class in this course, we will overview what we are going to learn in the lesson for the day. Students will be introduced to a new part of speech or aspect of diagramming. I will spend a few minutes lecturing and showing students examples on Google Slides. Then, students will practice diagramming sample sentences on their own. We will share answers, and students will have time to make their own sample sentences to diagram. Each class will consist of some lecture time and some time for students to share answers with one another. 

Students do not need any prior experience to join this class. Even if students understand what a noun and a verb are, they will still benefit from the slow but steady progression of adding other parts of speech and learning about important grammar rules. 

I am actually very excited about sentence diagramming. I know how much it helped me, and I have seen it work with many students.  Though it may be a dry topic to some, I think your learner will feel my enthusiasm throughout our classes. I cannot wait to see them learn and grow!


Meeting 1: The essential components of a complete sentence. Subjects and verbs + the base of a sentence diagram. Diagramming two word sentences.

Meeting 2: Defining and identifying helping verbs. Adding helping verbs to sentence diagrams. 

Meeting 3: Defining and identifying articles and adjectives. Adding articles and adjectives to sentence diagrams.

Meeting 4: Defining and identifying adverbs. Adding adverbs to sentence diagrams. 

Meeting 5: Defining and identifying prepositions and prepositional phrases. 

Meeting 6: Defining and identifying adjectival prepositional phrases. Adding adjectival prepositional phrases to sentence diagrams. 

Meeting 7: Defining and identifying adverbial prepositional phrases. Adding adverbial prepositional phrases to sentence diagrams.

Meeting 8: Defining and identifying coordinating conjunctions. Diagramming compound sentences.

Meeting 9: Defining and identifying compound subjects. Adding compound subjects to sentence diagrams. 

Meeting 10: Defining and identifying compound predicates. Adding compound predicates to sentence diagrams. 

Meeting 11: Defining and identifying compound adjectives and adverbs. Adding compound adjectives and adverbs to sentence diagrams.

Meeting 12: Defining and identifying compound prepositional phrases. Adding compound prepositional phrases to sentence diagrams. 

Meeting 13: Defining and identifying linking verbs, predicate adjectives, and predicate nominatives. 

Meeting 14: Diagramming linking verbs, predicate adjectives, and predicate nominatives. 

Meeting 15: Defining and identifying direct and indirect objects. 

Meeting 16: Adding direct and indirect objects to diagrams. Review of all that we have learned. 


Please message me if you would like to discuss another day or time for this class. I will conduct private lessons for learners if the full class minimum is paid for.