Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Focus on Grammar: Grammar Games

We had a great morning talking about grammar and the Common Core! Looking for the language standards by strand and then lining them up in grade level order helped everyone to really read the standards carefully and think about how they progress through the grade levels.

Here is a playlist with some of the videos that we watched, as well as some others that work well for instruction:





Computer games can be another way to help students review and practice key grammar topics. However, there are so many games out there that sometime it is hard to find the ones that are really useful for elementary students. Here are some games that I have found (and tested) that work well for various concepts.

Punctuation Games
Learn about basic punctuation with Comma Chameleon.

In Alien Punctuation from BBC, students help aliens by correcting sentences to add correct capitalization and punctuation.

The game Complex Sentence Camp helps students to learn how to punctuate complex sentences.

Along the Sentence Trail, students decide on the kind of sentence and add correct end punctuation.

Parts of Speech
This simple Noun Explorer game helps students to learn about nouns.

The Adjective Adventure game helps students to identify adjectives.

With the game Verbs in Space, students look for verbs. Multiple tenses are used.

Other Resources
When we worked with sentence combining, I mentioned that Bruce Saddler had a book that includes more detail about sentence combining. The title is Teacher's Guide to Effective Sentence Writing. If you get it, drop a line and let me know what you think!

Additional resources about sentence composing can be found at the Sentence Composing page hosted by Don and Jenny Killgallon.



1 comment:

  1. So excited to read your post. Grammar and how to teach it effectively & meaningfully is the hot topic for me this summer. You may also want to check out Jeff Anderson's two books (Everyday Editing & Mechanically Inclined) for sentence noticing, imitating and composing. In addition, the following resources show how to teach grammar as a tool to enhance writing in the writing process/workshop...plus they connect well with both the Killgallons and Jeff Anderson: Image Grammar by Harry R. Noden, The Grammar Plan Book and Grammar to Enrich & Enhance Writing both by Constance Weaver.

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