Not everything is an action
Read this sentence.
“The soup is hot.”
Ask what happens. Nothing, really. The soup is not doing anything. It just sits there being hot.
It is still a sentence, and it still has a telling part. The telling part is “is hot”.
Two jobs, one part
A telling part can do either of these:
- tell what someone or something does
- tell what someone or something is like
| Sentence | Telling part | Which job |
|---|---|---|
| The bird flies away. | flies away | what it does |
| The pot is hot. | is hot | what it is like |
| Leo runs fast. | runs fast | what he does |
| My hands are cold. | are cold | what they are like |
Look at the second and fourth rows. The words “is” and “are” do the telling there. They are quiet little words, but they carry the whole telling part.
A better question
If “what happens?” does not seem to fit a sentence, try this one instead:
What does the sentence tell me about the naming part?
In “My shoes are wet.” what does it tell you about the shoes? That they are wet. So “are wet” is the telling part.
A mistake to watch for
Some children decide a group of words is not a sentence because nobody is doing anything. That is not the test.
“The soup is hot.” has a naming part and a telling part, so it is a sentence. Action or no action does not come into it.
Your turn
Give the telling part. Then say whether it tells what something does or what it is like.
- “The wind blows hard.”
- “My best friend is funny.”
- “Two frogs jump in.”
- “The bread is warm.”
Check your answers
- “blows hard”, what it does
- “is funny”, what it is like
- “jump in”, what they do
- “is warm”, what it is like
Remember
- A telling part can tell what something does or what it is like.
- The words “is” and “are” can be the telling part.
- A sentence does not need an action to be a sentence.