Conjunctions for Sentences, Subjects and Predicates

Grade 5 English Language Arts Lesson 6

A conjunction is a word that joins two ideas together into a single sentence.  The most common conjunctions are “and”, “but” and “or”.  You’ve probably been using these for a long time, you just didn’t know that they were called conjunctions.

A conjunction can join two subjects, two predicates and two sentences. So instead of the sentence having just one subject and one predicate like “The hedgehog is awake”, a conjunction can add more. You can add another subject to get “The hedgehog and the bird are awake” so that you have two subjects and a predicate.

When two things happen in the sentences, you can keep going by adding in another predicate too.  “The hedgehog is angry and sleepy” is an example where two things happened to a single subject.

A conjunction can connect two sentences also “The hedgehog was angry and ran into her bed”.  The first part “The hedgehog was angry” is a sentence with both a subject and predicate. “Ran into her bed” is a predicate but is connected by “and” to the subject, the hedgehog.

“The man and the woman run in the park.” In this sentence, there are two subjects, man/woman, that are joined by the conjunction “and”.

“My favorite pizza has pepperoni and cheese.” The subject, pizza, has two things in the predicate, pepperoni/cheese.  Again they are joined with “and” in the sentence.

“The man was early but then his car broke down.” This time “but” connects two separate sentences.  They are related, they’re the same type of idea.  They could be sentences on their own, “The man was early.” “Then his car broke down” so the conjunction is connecting them instead.

“And” is often used to show that both things are positive.  Positive doesn’t mean good, it means that there are two things that do exist.  We had “the hedgehog and the bird”, “the man and the woman”, “pepperoni and cheese”.  In all of those examples we had two things together.

“But” is usually used to show a contrast between things that are opposites.  “The man was early” is something good then “then his car broke down” is the opposite, it was something bad.  The “but” in the sentence showed the contrast.

“Or” shows a choice, some kind of consequence happening.

Let’s practice with the three main conjunctions “and”, “but” and “or”. Decide which conjunction fits the following sentences.

1. Hawks are large, ____ eagles are bigger.
2. I like to play the piano, the guitar, _____ the violin.
3. You can do your homework _____ be grounded.
4. I slept ____ I’m still tired today.
5. I exercised ____ ate right on my diet.
6. You two stop fighting _____ I’ll stop this car.

“Hawks are large but eagles are bigger.”  They aren’t quite the same, there is a comparison between things. Hawks are being compared to eagles.

“I like to play the piano, the guitar, and the violin.”  These are all things that go together and things that exist.  “And” can be used with just two things or as part of a whole list.

“You can do your homework or be grounded”. This sentence has a choice so “or” is the correct conjunction to use.

“I slept but I’m still tired today.” Even though sleeping was a positive, still being tired isn’t. There are two opposite ideas here so “but” is the answer.

“I exercised and ate right on my diet.” This time “and” connects two positive predicates.

“You two stopped fighting or I’ll stop this car.” Another time to use “or” because there is a choice to be made.