Grammar

[lindsaydgreen]

I just finished teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, and I am going to switch to something new, and different. We are going to be working on their writing skills with review of grammar. What ways can this be FUN?! My students are 9th graders and I am preparing them for the OHIO GRADUATION TESTS that they will take next year. I feel like it is a lot of going over the rules, and doing the exercises...and I told myself I did not want to be boring! Any help will be great :-) :clap:

[Brit]

what skills do you need to teach?

have you read any Lynn Truss? "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" might be a good place to start. there are some fun exercises in there that she refers to as far as punctuation. there are kids' books, too. you might build from that. Something else that's fun is looking at funny gaffs from students (there are books of these out there, I'm sure) and figuring out what the joke is and why.

here's a classic punctuation e.g. from Truss:

Punctuate the following:
"Charles the First walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off"

correct response:
"Charles the First walked and talked. Half and hour after, his head was cut off."

(Eats, shoots and leaves page 13)

[Boxcar]

lol.

I wish I could be of some help, but i'm stumped. Maybe you could play some of the songs that are about grammer? Or you could take clips from common movies that are popular. Talk about what types of grammer mistakes were made. You could also find all the grammer mistakes in the newspaper. That might be fun for some of the students.

[Flamingarrow04]

Try to make grammar a fun learning experience. Most students simply despise learning grammar rules. To make it more interesting, try making the subject more "personal" by using things that they can relate to. For example, your students might enjoy looking for the parts of speech (to start) by looking at some of their favorite songs. How about reading a book? That's always a good place to start. Students can identify things they know...

Another GREAT idea is to begin grammar by giving a KWL chart (Know - Want to Know - Learned). This activity activates the students' prior knowledge. You can collect it and see what they know about grammar, (and what they want to learn!)

Like I said, try making this a fun experience. Try not to give worksheet after worksheet, as most students will hate this (especially lazy high schoolers).

If I can think of anything more, I will certainly let you know! Good luck!!

[Boxcar]

Games are good. Jeperdoy (sp?), Doors & Windows, Hangman, and others can all make learning a bit easier. Have a small prize available to motivate the students. It can be really small - like a candy bar. A bigger prize might be getting a homework pass or some extra credit.

[englishrocks]

Unfortunately, grammer is one of those things you just have to buckle down your boots and get it done. It's just one of those things you gotta take the Advil and just do it. I hate teaching grammer units with my Freshman Eng./Lit. classes. But I throw it in sparingly. And it ties in to something else I'm doing. One game is I take them outside, and we form a circle. Then I'll say a bad sentece and throw the ball. That person tells me whats wrong with the sentence. They throw it to someone else who explains how to fix it.

[Clearly Canadian]

Well, unfortunately the worksheet stuff is kind of a necessary evil, but there are a couple of things you can add in to help relieve the mind numbing worksheet overload. After learning some of the parts of speech (noun, plurals, verb, adjective, adverb) we play Madlibs. There are online versions and there are paper versions too, where you ask for a particular part of speech and take suggestions from the kids, and fill in the blanks. Don't read the story to the kids before hand, because the less they know the funnier the story will turn out.
There are also all kinds of school house rock videos on youtube for grammar. They're dated, but the songs are catchy and the kids will enjoy them. My grade 8's loved them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkO87mkgcNo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWYmEICNgOQ&feature=related
There are more, just search school house rock on youtube.
Finally there is an online game called grammar ninja http://www.kwarp.com/portfolio/grammarninja.html that works really well if you have a smart board.
If you do a search for grammar games, you'll find bucket loads of stuff. What did we ever do before google, youtube and the internet? Oh how I don't miss the day of the 8mm projector. :laugh: