February 26, 2016

Grammar: Avoid Boring Lessons & Incorporate It Into The Rest Of Your Curriculum

It can be difficult to get students excited about learning grammar, and even more difficult when you don't feel comfortable teaching it. In this #2ndaryELA Twitter chat, middle and high school English Language Arts teachers discussed approaches to teaching grammar, topics covered, avoiding boring lessons, and incorporating grammar into other aspects of ELA curriculum. Read through the chat for ideas to implement in your own classroom.
This #2ndaryELA Twitter chat was all about teaching grammar the ELA classroom. Middle and High School English Language Arts teachers discussed approaches to teaching grammar, topics covered, avoiding boring lessons, and incorporating grammar into other aspects of ELA curriculum. The highlights are below.

Grammar topics to cover:
*sometimes you need to start with the basics: nouns, verbs, adjectives
*comma rules and usage
*periodic v. cumulative sent
*parallelism
*sentence types
*punctuation
*subject/verb agreement
*gerunds

How to avoid boring grammar lessons:
*Grammar Tales, a set of funny little rhyming books
*NoRedInk
*Use authentic mentor texts to let students see what grammar looks like in real-world, high-interest, professional writing
*Teach grammar "in the moment," in the context of student's own writing
*M.U.G. Shots as warm ups
*Picture books can show excellent mentor sentences
*Use macaroni noodles to practice commas and apostrophes
*Use Mad Libs to practice parts of speech
*Use funny images and memes
*Short video clips from TED-Ed and Grammar Girl
*Using ProWritingAid and AnalyzeMyWriting http://

Ways to incorporate grammar into other aspects of the ELA curriculum:
*When teaching vocabulary, categorize words into parts of speech to understand how words function
*Use mentor sentences found in students' reading
*When writing poetry, have students brainstorm specific nouns, strong verbs, etc. related to writing topic
*Give each student a part of speech and have them come up with a secret word. Then have them arrange their bodies in sentence form and reveal their words
*Examine literature for the author's message through use of syntax

Other resources:
*Image Grammar : Using Grammatical Structures to Teach Writing
*Sentence Composing for High School: A Worktext on Sentence Variety and Maturity

Hope you'll join us next Tuesday night,  March 1st at 8pm EST to talk about using Google Apps in the classroom. The questions for our next chat will be posted here on Sunday.

We'd also love for you to join our 2ndaryELA Facebook group (even if you aren't on Twitter). 2ndaryELA is a group of middle and high school English Language Arts teachers looking to share ideas and best practices. This group is an extension of our Twitter chat and a place for collaboration, questions, and encouragement. Feel free to post teaching ideas, success stories, resource links, photos, etc. that will enhance our instruction. 

If you missed this most recent chat, scroll down and read the whole thing below.

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