As a literacy tutor and inclusive education specialist, Kate Coldrick, created this colour-coded sentence guide to help Functional Skills English learners understand sentence types with clarity and confidence.

If you’ve ever tried to explain the structure of English sentences to a neurodivergent learner – particularly an autistic student – you’ll know it’s rarely as straightforward as it looks in a grammar book.

English is full of exceptions, stylistic variations, and contradictory examples. A sentence structure rule you teach in the morning can be undone by a “real-world” example they read that afternoon. For students who thrive on consistency and logical systems, this can be incredibly frustrating.

I wanted to create a way of learning about the three core sentence types – simple, compound, and complex – that form the backbone of Functional Skills English writing from Entry Level 2 through to Level 2. My aim wasn’t to cover every stylistic detail or grammatical nuance. Instead, I wanted to offer a workable “line of best fit”: a practical set of tools students could rely on to guide their writing toward meeting exam requirements.

Why a Visual Approach?

Neurodivergent learners often process information most effectively when it’s:

• Sequential – broken down into logical, manageable steps.
• Visual – with structure and relationships made visible.
• Explicit – with ambiguities addressed rather than left to inference.

I approached this resource almost like a coding problem. What’s the clearest, most reliable “algorithm” for building and identifying each sentence type? How could I present this in a way that students could easily “debug” if their sentence didn’t quite fit the pattern?

The result was a colour-coded block system. Each block represents a part of the sentence – subject, verb, clauses, conjunctions – and together they form a visual map of how the sentence works. This makes the invisible grammar structure visible, turning an abstract concept into something concrete and consistent.

What the Resource Includes

The Sentence Types Teaching Pack gives learners and educators:

• A Visual Guide to sentence types with examples and blank writing frames.
• Four scaffolded worksheets that progress from identification to sentence building to error correction.
• Interactive activities and games to make practice engaging.
• Teacher notes and parent/carer guidance written in clear, accessible language – no jargon, no overcomplication.
• Functional Skills curriculum mapping from Entry Level 2 to Level 2.
• Full answer keys so support can be given confidently at home or in class.

Why This Works for Neurodivergent Learners

The strength of this approach is that it:

• Strips away unnecessary complexity while still being accurate.
• Provides a consistent reference framework – the “line of best fit” – that reduces uncertainty.
• Appeals to visual and pattern-recognition strengths, common in autistic learners.
• Builds confidence by making sentence structure something you can see and control.

This isn’t about limiting expression – it’s about giving students a safe, predictable starting point from which they can write with confidence and meet exam requirements.

If you’d like to explore the resource, you can start with the free sample, which includes the visual guide, a sample worksheet, and guidance extracts. The full pack is available in my TES shop and contains all four worksheets, games, answer keys, and the complete guidance set.

Thanks for reading,

Kate Coldrick – literacy tutor, educator, and resource creator

Learn more about my work on the About page, or browse more materials on the Resources page.

Written by Kate Coldrick, an educator and writer based in Woodbury near Exeter.