Parts of Speech- Notebook Activity

Here’s a fun grammar activity (if there is such a thing) that we did last week when we were reviewing parts of speech…

Now, I have to admit that grammar is not always my strongest subject to teach for a couple of reasons; a) I learned it well over 20 years ago, b) I don’t know all the rules by heart yet, c) it doesn't always make a lot of sense in my brain, and d) there’s always a thousand different ways to say the same thing in English. It can be really frustrating and confusing for me so I can only imagine the torture it must feel like to my mostly ESL students.

I started the lesson by playing this catchy little number to hook them in and then we listened a second time, making sure to pause and jot down notes in our notebooks. Once we made our way through the 8 parts of speech, I turned them loose with a stack of old magazines in the craft corner and sent them on a scavenger hunt for all the different parts of speech we just learned. Here’s a copy of the simple table I made for their notebooks and a few examples from my students so you have a visual. 

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•     They didn't get them all accurate, but they really tried. Guess we’ll be revisiting these again this week J

    If you have a different method that’s been more effective for teaching parts of speech, please leave me a tip. I’ll take all the help I can get!

Teaching Imperatives

Don’t you just love it when you get to teach an easy grammar lesson? I was thanking my lucky stars for this week’s super simple grammar chapter because I needed a little reprieve from the chaos of the week before break.

So here’s how I “do” imperatives-

We reviewed our procedural writing from last week, paying close attention to the verb forms we used. Then we determined that all of the steps of our writing piece began with the infinitive form of the verb without the “to”. After that, we put some examples on the board of common orders we hear either at school or at home… it wasn’t hard for them to come up with a handful of nags that they get every day from me and their parentsJ Once they understood what I was after, we did this fun activity where each student (could be group of students though) got a character and they had to write what imperatives that person would use. They LOVED it! Feel free to use them with your classes here.

Here are the notes we came up with for IMPERATIVES in English:

Purpose- Imperatives are used to give commands/orders, advice/suggestions, or directions.

Structure- Use the infinitive form of the verb without “to”

Examples- “Clean your room”, “Raise your hand to speak”, “Do your work”, etc

Broken Sentences

Let’s face it, grammar stinks! There, I said it. It stinks to teach, it stinks to learn, it just plain stinks. Whenever I even say the word, my students cringe. But there’s no denying its importance in English. It is vital to the development of writing and oral skills and it’s something that needs to be practiced daily in a mostly-ESL environment. I tell my students that practicing good grammar is like flossing or working out; you don’t have to do it, but it’s always a good idea (although that doesn’t seem to sell them).

I wanted to try something a little more, well, fun for this week’s grammar lesson so I introduced them to the broken sentence. I’m sure this is not an original idea, but basically it’s a sentence that has been scrambled and the students have to “fix” it. The way that I did it requires a few minutes of extra prep time, but trust me, it was totally worth it. The kids were INTO IT! Here’s what I did today:

I printed a few questions and sentences on a piece of paper (large font/bold works best) then cut them into strips.

Cut each sentence up into individual words and mix them so they’re out of order.

Set up numbered stations around the room and had them copy the sentences into their grammar notebooks.

For an added bonus, I offered 10 cool points (our sticker system) if they could correctly answer or ask questions to match the broken sentence. For example, we’ve been studying second and third conditional and one of the broken sentences was:

·         If you met Justin Bieber, what would you say?

They would have to answer:

·         If I met Justin Bieber, I would …

This is a really great activity to trick engage students in grammar. J If you have any fun grammar activities, please share them. Thanks, and have a great night!