Original: sloths are slow and sleepy: They sleep up to 20 hours a day and hardly move when awake.
Best corrected sentence (simple): Sloths are slow and sleepy. They sleep up to 20 hours a day and hardly move when they are awake.
Other correct options:
- Sloths are slow and sleepy; they sleep up to 20 hours a day and hardly move when they are awake.
- Sloths are slow and sleepy. They sleep up to twenty hours a day and hardly move when they're awake.
Why these changes?
- Capitalize the first word: Every sentence should start with a capital letter. So write "Sloths" instead of "sloths."
- Punctuation: A colon (:) can be used, but a period (.) is clearer here because the second part is its own sentence. A semicolon (;) also works because the two ideas are closely connected.
- Make the subject clear: "hardly move when awake" is okay, but it's clearer to say "when they are awake" so we know who "awake" refers to.
- Numbers: Writing "20" is fine, but in some writing you might spell it out as "twenty." For an 8-year-old, either is acceptable, but teachers sometimes prefer words for small numbers.
If you want, try writing your own sentence about sloths and I will check it!