I have belabored parts of speech since the beginning of the year but my students STILL don't understand the basics. I've spent days of each part of speech and provided plenty of examples. We watched all the Schoolhouse Rock videos and did activities with each. I guess grammar is like multiplication facts, they just need to study more. Sixth grade grammar is mainly all about pronouns which I have only barely touched on. I'm debating on continuing with the basics or just moving on to what they have to know for this year. I think I'm going to try at least a few more things before moving on.
One idea I had was to let students print the lyrics to their favorite song and have them color code the parts of speech. Another thought I had was to have students make a chart on construction paper of the different parts of speech and then glue words from newspapers to go under each.
I'm really hoping that next year my students will have a little more of an understanding of the basics. It's been hard this year because it will be the first time students are actually tested on grammar. I don't know that some of my students were ever even taught parts of speech before at all. I have a lot of work to do with them, but luckily this is one of my favorite things to teach!
What has worked for you when teaching grammar?
Hi Jamie!
ReplyDeleteI came across your blog via State blogs!
I love your blog and look forward to hearing great things.
As of grammar, the best thing you can do is DGP (Daily Grammar Practice) or DOL (Daily Oral Language). I teach high school students and it is astounding how much students do not know grammar. With grammar, the best way to do it is practice practice practice.
I have a few "Grammar Dipsticks" in my TPT store. Here is the link to one, this one is free :) http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Grammar-Practice-Homophones
There are 5 sentences per slide and I do one slide per day, calling on random people. The ones who got it wrong the previous day have to be called on again. I have a student be "the teacher" and circle/underline the correct answer while I walk around and monitor everyone writing down their answers. I also have individual whitebords and sometimes to make it fun will give them all whiteboard, piece of paper towel, a dry erase marker and have them write their answer as quickly as possible and hold up their whiteboard so I can see their answers and see who does and does not know it.
FYI, I went to Home DePot and got a sheet of whiteboard, had them cut it into 38 individual squares for less than 15 dollars!
I hope this helps!
Colleen
Bergin's Classroom