Grammar can be a doldrum task for students, whether you loathe or love it as a teacher. After over a decade as an educator, finding a student who enjoyed grammar was rare.
At one of my schools, I had to teach grammar as a separate class. For forty-five minutes every day, my sixth and seventh graders learned grammar. I think more schools should teach in this capacity. I saw how grammar, taught in isolation, made for stronger writers. Nevertheless, I had to dig deep to find ways to make it interesting each day for that length of time. It was a rewarding challenge. Since this was a subject that students dreaded already, I had to win them over to get them engaged in the content.
If you don’t know where to even start when it comes to teaching grammar, I suggest our first blog post on the subject, Tips for Teaching Grammar.
If you have a set curriculum and are confident in your grammar skills, but want to liven it up for your class, here are 5 ways you can make teaching grammar fun for students.
#1 Make Grammar Fun: Music
When teaching grammar, I have found the following sequence to be the most successful:
Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Prepositional Phrases, Pronouns, Conjunctions, and Interjections. While teaching each concept in isolation, I would use fun jingles or music. Even for students who don’t love music, these catchy tunes become ingrained enough for students to utilize them when it matters most.
I highly recommend the following:
Shurley English Grammar Jingles
Grammaropolis
Schoolhouse Rock
MC Grammar
The Bazillions
Jack Hartman
I remember some of my middle schoolers going to high school in the same building and still singing some grammar songs, especially The Bazillions’ Prepositions song! For younger kids, sing the song together, incorporating movement, which helps students remember the concepts even more.
#2 Make Grammar Fun: Get Students Out of Their Seats
Incorporate ways to make grammar hands-on and interactive. Worksheets, even though a bit necessary at some points in grammar instruction, can become boring. Find ways for students to get out of their seats to practice grammar. Here are some ideas!
Grammar Identification Race:
Prepare a PowerPoint or Google Slides Presentation ahead of time that displays two separate sentences on the same screen. Project the two separate sentences on the board and line your students into two teams. Teams earn points when their side finishes identifying all the nouns or all the verbs correctly first or classifying the entire sentence with all 8 parts of speeches. You can change it up depending on what you’re studying at the time.
Grammar Trasketball:
Divide your class into two teams. The first team selects a student to come to the front of the room. Display or read a sentence aloud and have the student identify the part of speech you are currently learning. If the student gets it right, they earn a point for their team. Then, they can earn an extra point by shooting a ball into a basket or a trash ball into the trash can. Fair warning: students can get very excited over this one.
Scoot:
There are so many grammar scoot games available online or you can make your own task cards to play this game. Scoot is a way for students to answer task cards in a fun way. Display grammar questions on individually numbered cards that are on each desk in the classroom. Students take a piece of paper along with them or an answer sheet and a pencil. Make sure they number the paper ahead of time if it’s not a pre-made answer sheet. Next, they have 30 seconds to a minute to answer each task card question before the teacher says, “Scoot.” Then they proceed to go to the desk next to them. (Make sure you thoroughly explain that when they write down their answer, it should be next to the number on their answer sheet that is the same numbered card they’re answering.) I love Scoot because the class becomes so intent and concentrated, yet they’re able to move around and get some energy out.
Card-Sort Races:
Using cards, students work in small teams to sort sets of cards into the correct categories. For instance, you might have your students sort cards of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The first team that gets the cards sorted correctly wins the game.
#3 Make Grammar Fun: Grammar Projects
A project is a great way for students to practice the grammar skills they’ve learned and for you to assess understanding as well. Projects help students see grammar utilized in authentic ways and helps them use their creativity to practice what they’ve learned.
Some grammar project ideas include the following:
Restaurant Menu:
Design a restaurant menu that focuses on nouns and adjectives. Students design a menu and each food item must have a descriptive caption. Students must underline nouns and circle adjectives.
5 Favorite Songs:
Students analyze their top 5 favorite songs. They create a presentation or posterboard that displays the lyrics to their top songs and then, they identify the various parts of speech, depending on what they’re learning.
Comic Book:
When learning interjections, students design a comic book (digitally or on paper) and must use a certain number of interjections appropriately.
Magazine Collage:
Students create a magazine collage in which they peruse magazines and cut out words that show a specific part of speech.
#4 Make Grammar Fun: Online Grammar Games
Teachers can create their own grammar games on Kahoot! or find pre-made games. My students always loved a good game of Kahoot!
Blooket is another website where students can play as a whole class like Kahoot! However, Blooket has so many different features that make it even more exciting for students. Discover pre-made grammar games on its website. Students can choose between different kinds of games that incorporate grammar questions into them, such as CryptoHack, Deceptive Dinos, and Tower Defense. The different games add a whole other element of problem-solving for students.
Grammar Ninja is a popular and simple online grammar word game students love.
Funbrain is a great website with tons of grammar games and videos.
Online grammar games were utilized in my classroom as an early finisher option, a way to prepare for assessment, and as a general practice. Online games are a different change of pace for students and helps them get excited about learning.
#5 Make Grammar Fun: Writing
One of the main purposes of grammar instruction is for students to be able to carry it over into their writing. When I taught grammar as an entirely separate class, something happened that was remarkable, but to be expected. I taught the same students in a separate English Class and saw just how strong their writing became when grammar was taught in isolation. Students were writing grammatically sound essays at a quicker rate than they were before when students did not have this separate Grammar class.
Even if you can’t have a whole forty-five minutes to devote to grammar, teaching a little bit each day will help create those strong writers. Once students are confident in their grammar skills, it transfers quite naturally into their writing.
Students will see grammar as fun if it’s incorporated into a bigger purpose: within their writing assignments. Find fun writing prompts for students and interesting writing pieces for them to tackle.
Within these writing units, teach mini-lessons on grammar concepts. For instance, teach a quick lesson on adjectives before you dive into a descriptive writing piece. When students are writing an action-packed narrative, teach a quick lesson on verbs and interjections. Students will see what they’re learning being used in authentic ways, making for fun and interesting practice and providing intrinsic motivation for them.
Here are two of our own fun and exciting writing activities students will love!
Conclusion
Through music, online and in-person games, getting students out of their seats, fun projects, and engaging writing activities, students will find out that grammar can be exciting. Use these five creative strategies to get your students engaged in grammar instruction. Your students will thank you.