Teaching Writing:
Sentence Fundamentals
Students should be able to express one idea in a complete sentence.
My dog ate my homework.
A complete sentence has a subject and a predicate.
The subject of the sentence represents the actor, usually a person who does the action of the sentence. The predicate of the sentence is the verb (action) of the sentence and what follows the verb. In our example, "My dog" is the subject, or actor, for the sentence. The dog completes the action listed in the predicate. The predicate is "ate my homework." "Ate" is the action done by the dog and the homework is the direct object of the verb, or what the dog ate.