How can you tell they’ve got it: Fixing Fragments & Run-Ons?

If they’ve got it, you’ll see things like: Identify a sentence fragment by checking whether it has both a subject and a predicate, e.g. recognise 'Running through the park' as a fragment and correct to 'The dog was running through the park'; Identify a run-on sentence where two independent clauses are fused without punctuation or a conjunction, e.g. 'I like cats I also like dogs' and correct using a full stop, comma + conjunction, or semicolon; Edit a paragraph to fix fragments and run-ons, choosing the most effective correction strategy for each error. Or just try it together: If your child's writing has a sentence like "Running down the street." or two ideas jammed together without any punctuation, can they spot that something's wrong and fix it?

English Grammar & Punctuation Ages 9–10

Fixing Fragments & Run-Ons

Your child can spot and fix a broken sentence or one that runs on too long. They check each part has a naming word and an action.

In curriculum terms

Recognise and correct sentence fragments (incomplete sentences lacking a subject or predicate) and run-on sentences (two or more independent clauses joined without proper punctuation or conjunctions)

Ages are typical, not deadlines — follow your child’s pace. How to help at home →

How to tell they’ve got it

Tick these off as you see them — no test required.

Identify a sentence fragment by checking whether it has both a subject and a predicate, e.g. recognise 'Running through the park' as a fragment and correct to 'The dog was running through the park'
Identify a run-on sentence where two independent clauses are fused without punctuation or a conjunction, e.g. 'I like cats I also like dogs' and correct using a full stop, comma + conjunction, or semicolon
Edit a paragraph to fix fragments and run-ons, choosing the most effective correction strategy for each error

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Try this together

If your child's writing has a sentence like "Running down the street." or two ideas jammed together without any punctuation, can they spot that something's wrong and fix it?

Where this sits on the map

Stuck here? Check the skills it builds on first. Confident? Here’s what it unlocks.

Builds on

Building sentencesages 4–6Recognising and correcting sentence fragments requires a clear conceptual understanding of what constitutes a complete sentence

Subordinate clausesages 6–9Recognising fragments and run-ons requires understanding how independent and dependent clauses combine; subordination/coordination knowledge is essential

Fixing Fragments & Run-Onsthis skill · ages 9–10

Unlocks

Nothing on the map depends on this yet.

solid = must come firstdashed = helps

Curriculum alignment

Where this fits in the official school curriculum — our best automated guess, not yet checked by a person.

Show candidate curriculum codes · 1 ACARA · 1 VIC

Australian Curriculum v9 candidate

AC9E6LA05low confidenceYear 6 · Language

understand how embedded clauses can expand the variety of complex sentences to elaborate, extend and explain ideas

Victorian Curriculum 2.0 codes & levels only

VC2E3LY12low confidenceEnglish · Level 3 · Literacy strand

These are candidate alignments generated by semantic matching — machine-suggested and unreviewed (v0.1), not official or verified mappings. For official curriculum content see australiancurriculum.edu.au, curriculum.nsw.edu.au and f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. Don’t rely on them for registration or compliance purposes.

Nearby on the map

Adjective Order in Sentencesages 9–10 Brackets and dashes for parenthesisages 9–10 Cohesion within paragraphsages 9–11 Commas Before Joining Wordsages 9–11

All Grammar & Punctuation skills →