Grammar

[lindsaydgreen]

I just finished teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, and I am going to switch to something new, and different. We are going to be working on their writing skills with review of grammar. What ways can this be FUN?! My students are 9th graders and I am preparing them for the OHIO GRADUATION TESTS that they will take next year. I feel like it is a lot of going over the rules, and doing the exercises...and I told myself I did not want to be boring! Any help will be great :-) :clap:

[Brit]

what skills do you need to teach?

have you read any Lynn Truss? "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" might be a good place to start. there are some fun exercises in there that she refers to as far as punctuation. there are kids' books, too. you might build from that. Something else that's fun is looking at funny gaffs from students (there are books of these out there, I'm sure) and figuring out what the joke is and why.

here's a classic punctuation e.g. from Truss:

Punctuate the following:
"Charles the First walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off"

correct response:
"Charles the First walked and talked. Half and hour after, his head was cut off."

(Eats, shoots and leaves page 13)

[Boxcar]

lol.

I wish I could be of some help, but i'm stumped. Maybe you could play some of the songs that are about grammer? Or you could take clips from common movies that are popular. Talk about what types of grammer mistakes were made. You could also find all the grammer mistakes in the newspaper. That might be fun for some of the students.