WHAT CAN YOU DO??

Turn Grammar into a Game

By incorporating games into your lesson plan, your students will not only stop dreading grammar lessons, but they’ll actually look forward to them.
Board games, such as Go to Press! A Grammar Game, are sure to be a big hit with young students, and will have them giggling too. In this unique game, students try to create a complete newspaper by moving from department to department (such as entertainment, sports, weather, etc.) finding and correcting errors in the headlines. The goal is to be the first player to return to the boss’s office and say, “Go to press!”
If you don’t have access to board games, there are still a number of activities you can have students participate in. Create a crossword puzzle and use the clues to get students to practice critical thinking skills about the grammar lesson of your choice. Or, try playing a game of hangman to get students focused on adjectives.

Make Grammar Something to Sing About

Children love to sing, and singing can certainly be used to teach English grammar. One way to do this is to sing out the words to common songs or rhymes they already know, and have students point out certain focal points.
Take the following, for example:

“I’ve been working on the railroad, all the live long day
I’ve been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away
Can’t you hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morning
Can’t you hear the captain shouting, Dinah blow your horn”

What verb tenses are used in this song? Where are the nouns? Are the nouns singular or plural? What about prepositions or apostrophe use?

Getting Physical with Grammar

Children learn best by doing. Show your students the correlation between grammar and the activities they do everyday. Taking them out to the playground and having them jump rope, run, or play ball to demonstrate the importance of verbs (or nouns, adjectives, or prepositions) is much more likely to get your point across than discussing these same concepts while your children listen quietly from their desks.
Another major advantage of getting your students engaged in physical activity is that it breaks up the monotony of classroom learning, and helps reinvigorate them; especially important if you notice they are getting restless or bored.

RESOURCES

http://www.english-4kids.com/worksheet.html

http://www.english-4kids.com/grammarsheets.html

http://www.english-4kids.com/games.html

Teaching Children Grammar Through Games

One of the questions ESL and TEFL teachers are asking on forums the world over is: how can you teach grammar through games?

If you don't want your class to glaze over with dictation, writing exercises and "Jimmy, would you please read paragraph 1," then take heart! You'll find you can teach everything you want with games, and the children remember it better to boot.

Here is a disarmingly simple game, which can be used for many purposes. Please note this particular game is for small groups of up to 20 children or so, and you need floor space. If you have more than 20 children, or no floor space then please see the bottom of the article for games suited to your needs.

The players stand round in a circle with one player standing in the middle. Each player has a picture of an item, or a word flash card, except for the player in the middle. Call out two of the picture card items or words. The two players holding these cards have to change places without the person in the middle grabbing one of their spots. If the person in the middle manages to slip into the spot in the circle then the one left standing goes in the middle. The new person in the middle hands their flash card to the child taking their place in the circle.

If someone is stuck in the middle for two turns say, "All Change!" When the players hear this they must all change places, which gives the person in the middle a very good chance of joining the circle. Once everyone has had one go ask your class to pass their picture to the right, and take the one handed to them from the left. You can give them another go with the new picture.

Notice that only 2 children move at any one time (aside from when you say "All Change"), which makes it easy to keep control.

How could you use this game in your language teaching? Firstly, you can use it to reinforce new vocabulary, secondly, for revision, thirdly to help spelling by playing the game with word flashcards instead of pictures, and fourthly, to practise a grammatical structure.

Let us say you want to teach the conditional tense and you start with "I would like". Hand out pictures of food that your pupils already know. Call out "I would like bananas and pie". The pupil with the bananas tries to change places with the pupil holding the pie without the person in the middle taking one of the spots in the circle. Continue until everyone has had a go, repeating the target structure each time. With a class that learns quickly you can also introduce the rest of the declension (he and she would like, etc.). You are now ready to proceed to a speaking game where your pupils use the target structure, as they will have heard it repeatedly by now. You can follow the speaking game up with a writing game, and hey presto your children can understand, say, read and write the new target structure.

Now what better way is there to teach grammar than that? You are teaching grammar by absorption and repetition, which is the way we learn our native tongue, and for children it is by far the best way to go.

How to Teach English Grammar to Kids

Teaching children in a group is a balancing act between keeping everyone's attention and not letting the focus of the lesson disappear in the excitement. Teaching grammar is no different than teaching history in this aspect. The stereotype is that grammar is equally boring. However, language is interactive, so the rules of grammar can be taught in games using the spirit of competition rather than going through lists. A balance of group and individual work will give kids a better understanding of the way language works, particularly in classes with students between 6 and 10 years old. In a class, for example, you could get the children's attention right away, then move into a grammar-related game, then summarize the grammar points learned in the game and then engage the kids in written work at the end.

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Board
• Markers or chalk in several colors
• Lesson plan
• Song or poem
• Photocopied worksheets

1. Plan a lesson covering one important concept in grammar instead of packing in several smaller ideas. Changing focus from one point to the next uses up a lot of time. You do not want to lose anyone or to move on to the next point before the whole class understands.
2. Include visual stimuli in your lesson. Think about drawing on the board a verb-eating lion or a noun-hungry hippo and getting the kids to feed the animal the correct part of speech. If the students are comfortable enough, encourage them to come to the board and write the correct verbs or nouns. If you are teaching uncountable nouns, get the kids to try counting grains of sugar or kernels of corn. Then the lesson is realistic for the class, although be aware that it could get messy.
3. Let the kids make some noise. Use a poem they can repeat after you and add new lines to, such as one that rhymes or practices the use of one simple word. For example, make a poem with animals or machines and finish with things you can and can't do. "I am a bear, and I can climb trees" or "I am an airplane and I can fly" are lines that provide practice in modal verbs like "can".
4. Use movement in the classroom when you can. It helps in teaching verb tenses, such as comparing the progressive to the simple. "Susan is cleaning the board," as opposed to "Susan cleans the board." Playing the game "Simon Says" can get everyone involved. "Simon says, touch your toes", then ask "What are we are doing?" and the answer should be progressive: "We are touching our toes".
5. Bring the class back to order. Calm everyone down and give them time to realize they need to sit and be still again. Then hand out a worksheet that relates to the game. Recap the important points of the exercises and rules slowly in a calm and clear voice to bring the kids' focus back to the school work.
   
   
   
   
   

Teaching Grammar to Children

Teaching children English grammar can be a daunting task for two main reasons. First, there are so many nuances of the language for children to learn. Second, learning all of these rules can be boring. However, teaching English grammar can be done in an engaging way. If you have not read the book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," you should.

Instructions

1. Expose your students to the proper use of English grammar. Children will internally develop many grammar rules on their own through exposure to the language. It's your responsibility as the teacher to provide this exposure. This means always modeling proper grammar in your speech and writing. If you don't want your students to make errors in subject-verb agreement, don't make these errors yourself. Also, get your students reading as much as possible. Good writers do a lot of reading.
2. Teach grammar rules systematically. Exposure alone won't teach all the grammar lessons children need to know. Perhaps you've heard of the whole language versus phonics debate. Most professionals agree that exemplary reading and writing instruction requires a balance of these two technique. However, don't try to dole out too much information at one time. Instead, focus on one particular skill that you want your students to learn, and provide a mini-lesson teaching this skill. Your mini-lesson should introduce the grammar rule in question and give examples of its use. Once your students master the selected skill, move on to other topics.
3. Provide hands-on experience to help children master grammar rules. Provide your students with ample opportunities to write. Then, provide grammar-based feedback. Take your students' writing level into account when providing feedback. For example, in a second-grade classroom, you will see many grammar and usage errors. Don't mark up every mistake in red pen; it's too discouraging for students. Instead, focus on the grammar rules you have specifically taught.
4. Give students opportunities to edit others' work. Often, when students look at their own writing, they miss grammatical errors because as the writer, they know what they intended to say. Those same children can identify similar mistakes in others' writing, however. To this end, have students peer review each others' work. Also, editing worksheets provide opportunities for students to apply the grammar rules they have learned.