Make Grammar Fun Again!

Oh grammar, dreaded grammar, not ever fun, super boring grammar. Right? WRONG! Let me share a little story with you about how I shifted my entire perspective of grammar, and how my students actually BEG for just a little more.

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Story time....

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Let's rewind to the summer before I started my 6th year of teaching. I was making my schedule and trying to fit everything into the day. I could not, for the life of me, figure out where to fit in teaching grammar. I was looking over the standards and remember asking myself, "WHY?! Why does a 4th grader need to know how to order 7 different adjectives in a sentence? Don't they just learn that through conversation? Is this really going to matter to them? Does it even matter to me?" I bet you can guess what my answer was. The more I thought about it, I realized that every single year my students came to me not knowing their basic parts of speech. They still didn't know what a verb was, and they always mixed up adjectives and adverbs. If they didn't have those basic things down, what was the point of trying to just cram them through the rest of the grammar core. I made a decision. I decided that I just didn't have the time, nor did I want to take the time away from something else to teach ALL the grammar.

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What if, at a whole class level, I just focused on the parts of speech. What if I could absolutely ensure that every student in my class would have their basic parts of speech DOWN for their next teacher. I could teach more advanced grammar concepts to the students who were ready for it during my guided reading groups. Sure it was a little unconventional, but it's like I always say..."If something isn't working, CHANGE IT!"

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"If something isn't working, CHANGE IT!"

I began searching for ways that I could quickly fit in teaching the basic parts of speech that would help ALL my students really understand it. I wanted something quick, fun, and engaging, that I could just pull out each week or when I had a little extra time. Long story short- I didn't find it. So I made it myself.

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Introducing Grammar Games

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I created engaging grammar games that the whole class could play together to teach, review, and enforce some of the basic parts of speech. Once we started playing, my students couldn't get enough and literally were asking to play during recess. If that's not a win I don't know what is. Here's how they work!

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Before you start, you'll want to give each student a whiteboard and marker. Then you'll display a Lucky Grammar game up on your front board. Let's pretend you're playing this Free Lucky Nouns Game.

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When the picture pops up (like the one below,) your students will have a time limit to write down as many nouns as they can. You can make the time limit anywhere from 30 seconds-1 minute. When times up, markers freeze and you'll click to the next screen to reveal which nouns were lucky! Students will keep track of their points if they happen to get any of the lucky nouns. The element of luck here really keeps students engaged and ensures that it isn't predictable which students will always win.

The element of luck here really keeps students engaged and ensures that it isn't predictable which students will always win.

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Once students write down their score, you'll click again to the next picture! Each game has 5 different photos that are high engagement (and may even get some laughs) from your students. You can play again and again by snagging the bundle of games! These work excellent as brain breaks, or as a 10-15 minute grammar lesson that will actually help your students understand and practice their basic parts of speech.

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Ready to have some FUN with your students? There's no reason not to! Grab the Freebie or grab the bundle so you're set for the year!

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