Better ways to engage students while teaching grammar
Do you want to teach grammar, but struggle finding ways to make teaching grammar interesting?
Grammar tends to often get the short end of the stick, and is the first thing to be dropped when we are busy or running out of instruction time. I get it!
Below are some tips that will help engage students when teaching grammar. You may notice an overarching theme to all the tips: Keep it SHORT and SIMPLE!
Tip #1: Stick to a routine
Consistency is key when it comes to teaching grammar!
Bring grammar into part of your literacy stations or centers. Find a 15-minute free chunk of time during the day to work on it (looking at you, awkwardly used time between lunch and recess). Complete an activity every morning right after the bell rings. Give students one Google Classroom activity a day.
Find a time that fits your schedule, and make it work.
A routine also will save you prep and planning time. Don’t struggle to think of a new game or activity for review – just plug in with a Google Classroom or notebook piece.
Distance learning? Send students one grammar activity each day to complete to keep grammar fresh in their minds.
Tip #2: Teaching grammar in chunks
Time to learn parts of speech! Do we learn all 8 at once? I don’t know about you, but most students could not handle that when you are teaching grammar. That is A LOT of information at once!
Split it up. Verbs? Okay. Helping verbs? Action verbs? Linking verbs? Make these big ideas smaller and smaller for students to truly grasp each one.
Sometimes when splitting things up into tiny sections, it’ll feel like you’re not teaching much. But you are! You are helping your students become experts on a topic. These tiny building blocks will come together to form a strong grammar foundation.
Tip #3: Spiral back… a lot
Y’all. Practice makes perfect (well just kidding… it makes improvement). You know what else? Multiple exposure makes perfect.
Students will see the forest through the trees the more often that you introduce a grammatical concept to them. Give them a little dose of grammar each day during literacy centers. And not just a new topic – make sure to review older topics as well.
Tip #4: Make it fun!
Let’s be honest… the word “grammar” doesn’t create much excitement.
And grammar with a boring, every day worksheet? Count me out.
Try a different approach to grammar! You could use:
- Digital resources
- Color-by-numbers
- Games
- Interactive notebooks
You can create these yourself, or you can find teaching grammar resources on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Here are some my FAVORITE grammar products:
- Grammar Color-by-Numbers
- Grammar Digital Mystery Pictures
- Grammar for Google Classroom
- Grammar interactive Notebook
Looking for more ideas for teaching grammar?
You may be interested in myΒ other grammar blog posts, including:
- Digital games and activities for subject and predicate
- How to make teaching grammar fun
- How to teach common and proper nouns
- The 4 Rules to live by when teaching singular & plural nouns