When teaching, I was always looking for activities which incorporated more than one outcome. Our school year was not nearly long enough to include all the work which was set out for us to do, so I needed to improvise 😉
I would try to include grammar where ever I could as technically we were only allocated 1 hour a week (Yes, you read correctly – 1 hour a week) to teach grammar. As a result, I got creative and started integrating grammar into everything else I taught. Not a full on grammar lesson, but rather a touch on what had already been covered throughout the year.
Identifying Grammar in Texts
As an example, while reading texts, students would point out various punctuation marks and grammar concepts as we went along. As a reward, I would link my laptop to the projector and display an online book. Students would then take turns to read passages out loud (as this was a reward, no one was forced to read, but rather volunteer to read).
After each passage, I would ask students to identify parts of speech, punctuation marks, figurative language – whatever I spotted in the paragraph. Students would then walk up to the board, select a color marker and underline it on the board for others to see. -It was like a grammar/punctuation/figurative language scavenger hunt. And they LOVED it! We often used Funbrain.com.
Grammar in Games
In many of my lessons, I tried to use he first 5-10 minutes for a recap on the Grammar that had previously been covered. I had a huge shelf at the front of my classroom and it was stacked with containers of language and math board games which I had created. I would write on the board, which game would be played during this time. When students entered the class, they each knew their role and would collect the games and start to play. They knew there was limited time, so they would waste none. You can view my upper elementary / middle school games here.
Listening for Grammar
I am now also in the process of compiling listening activities which require students to listen for certain parts of speech. So often our worksheets require students to look for the part of speech. Now they can apply what they have learnt, use/develop their listening skills to identify the part of speech – it adds an extra challenge.
So far Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives have been uploaded to my Teachers Pay Teachers store. If you are interested, you can check it out here.
