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How to teach … grammar | Teacher Network | Guardian Professional


How to teach … grammar

Do your students struggle with misplaced commas or muddled tenses? Here are the best lesson resources on teaching good grammar
Apostrophe
Incorrect use of an apostrophe is a common grammatical mistake for students. Photograph: Alamy

Do your students often confuse the subject with the object, or the comparative adjective with the superlative? The Guardian Teacher Network has collected a range of lesson resources on grammar to help you bring clarity to your pupils' sentences.

The first worth mentioning is eight parts of speech, a succinct guide to English grammar. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are all covered in this handy printable document. A big thanks to teacher Joseph Donovan for sharing this resource, which can be used in conjunction with his punctuation card.

Next up, one of the most popular resources on the Guardian Teacher Network: The big grammar book. It consists of 101 English grammar worksheets for you to download and photocopy – ideal to use in a class with entry-level English and English as a second language pupils, or for students to work on at home.

The worksheets cover the basics including: irregular vowels, elementary homophones, comparatives, superlatives, compound nouns, full stops and using capital letters.

You can also try this online grammar activity that investigates how formality, vocabulary and grammar can be changed to suit the situation or context pupils are communicating in. It focuses on using the active and passive voice.

Grammar trouble spots is aimed at 14- to 16-year-olds but will be useful for anyone with questionable grammar (colleagues included). The lesson looks at common pitfalls, including muddling up prepositions, finding agreement or concord between subjects and verbs, the apostrophe, confusing subjects and objects, and the article.

It also looks at a few amusing examples of ambiguity in sentences, which can make pupils' writing hilarious but difficult to understand. How to rectify these common errors is clearly explained.

Grammar and punctuation bingo is a fun way for primary-aged children to learn about full stops, question marks, exclamation marks and also delve into the correct use of ellipsis, semicolons and brackets.

This really useful set of word puzzles from theschoolrun.com is designed for seven- to 11-year-olds. The word games strengthen children's knowledge of grammar and spelling in a fun way. Perfect for next term (or anyone keen over the summer), the puzzles cover adjectives, adverbs, apostrophes, comparatives and superlatives, nouns, past and present tense, prefixes and suffixes, similes, synonyms, antonyms and connectives – with useful descriptions of each for any confused adults out there.

You could also try 10 word puzzles aimed at four- to seven-year-olds, with activities on connectives, high-frequency words, help practising three- and four-letter words and work on proper and common nouns.

Predicting words is a useful online lesson aimed at students under seven. Children predict words using their knowledge of how sentences are formed and learn how to check their work for sense.

In Reading aloud primary-aged children read exclamations and words in speech marks and then learn how punctuation changes the way a sentence sounds.

Types of sentences helps upper primary-aged children to identify the four main types of sentences: statements, questions, exclamations and commands. Through some quick online activities, the lesson looks specifically at how the grammar alters when the sentence type changes. Changing sentences builds directly on this knowledge and so the two lessons work nicely together.

Want to introduce grammar while teaching a certain subject? This lesson on subject-specific writing has advice for secondary school students on how to use vocabulary, sentence structure and grammar in historical analysis or scientific investigations.

You can help key stage 2 students understand grammar concepts using poetry with this lesson plan from Rachel Rooney of The Poetry Society. It covers grammar, using adverbs, punctuation, history and group poems.

For secondary students, why not use this list of commonly misspelt words in conjunction with the English grammar card?

If you want to make your grammar display area stand out then download this display banner from Twinkl. And for something fun, look to Mr A, Mr C and Mr D Present who have surpassed themselves once again with their fun grammar dance. Find the lyrics here.

Finally, to find out how good your grammar and punctuation skills are, why not test yourself in our quiz?

Follow us on Twitter via @GuardianTeach. Join the Guardian Teacher Network for lesson resources, comment and job opportunities, direct to your inbox.

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2 comments. Showing conversations, threads , sorted
  • Kale
    2

    I note that the Grammar Trouble Spots calls 'bored of' an incorrect collocation - this seems somewhat dated (see http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/bored-by-of-or-with).

  • Quaestor
    1

    The big issues with the teaching of grammar lie in identifying the most important things for children to know, and then teaching them clearly. Mistakes are being made in both areas. The most important terms to understand are sentence and verb. Verb is not clearly explained if verbs are described as doing words, and sentence is the key unit of written rather than spoken language. Most sentences revolve around subject - which needs to be taught - and verb. The explanation of both to children is held up by taking adult terminology, whether from the renaissance or academic linguistics, and presenting it to children in ways that make it difficult for them to understand.

    I've written two pieces on this, one on terminology for Scottish CILT, http://www.strath.ac.uk/media/faculties/hass/scilt/slr/issues/20/Bald_pp1-6.pdf

    and one on explaining basic grammar to young children

    http://johnbald.typepad.com/language/2012/07/beginning-to-teach-grammar-brief-technical-note.html

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