Announce you’re going to dive into grammar, and some of your students are bound to groan. The system and structure of a language is not every child’s cup of tea, but good grammar is a key to unlocking their inner writer. And teaching grammar to your students can be a lot of fun for you and your class of kids too. We’ve even made it easier with 20 creative grammar activities to use in the classroom.
As a teacher, I’m a strong believer that context-based grammar holds an important place for effective learning. By context, I mean learning about how grammar works in big books, picture books, digital books, magazines, newspapers, and of course in our own writing. Not only will learning grammar be more enjoyable, but your students will also have an opportunity to see how the new grammar structures work.
This is not to say that there is no time or place for a grammar worksheet to focus learning on a particular grammar convention. As teachers, we know that a variety of activities is the way to go in order to maximize learning and to meet the needs of students with different learning styles. These grammar activities take advantage of a variety of methods to make stringing sentences together a lot of fun!
Grammar Activities for Younger Students
Sorting Adjective, Verbs, and Nouns
An activity idea with lots of options!
I’m always happy to find ways to incorporate interactive displays in the classroom and I love the simplicity of this hands-on grammar activity.
There are lots of ways that you could use this idea. Try one or two of these:
- Sort the popsicle/craft sticks as a class.
- Ask a small group to sort the craft sticks as a literacy rotation activity.
- Encourage the students to add craft sticks to the cups when they come across an interesting verb, adjective, or noun during speaking, listening, and writing.
- Extend knowledge by adding a cup and differentiating between common and proper nouns.
Sentence Building
Look no further than our Units and Lesson Plans to find a ten-week Let’s Build a Sentence Unit!
Build grammar skills with this comprehensive unit
This English unit has been created to introduce the key components of simple and compound sentences to students up to the third grade. It is packed full of grammar activities to develop knowledge and understanding of capital letters and punctuation; verbs, nouns, adjectives, and conjunctions. With 10 lessons, each about an hour long, there’s plenty of grammar goodness to be found!
Use Big Books to Teach Grammar!
I am a big fan of using books to model language and grammar conventions. There are so many contemporary children’s picture books to choose from. However, if you’re looking for a well-known traditional folktale to use, the Gingerbread Man is an obvious choice. This is a classic choice because it opens the door to explore punctuation of simple sentences, capitalization of proper and common nouns and verbs.
Download our My Drawing of the Gingerbread Man Worksheet, to give your students the opportunity to explore the use of adjectives through drawing. Or, identify the different verbs in this folktale by using our Very Important Verbs Worksheet.
Learn grammar in the context of traditional folktales
Character Adjective Accordion
Expand your students’ minds, and make this super cool Character Adjective Accordion Template. Whether your students focus on adjectives to describe a character from a fairy tale, class novel, or themselves, this popular teaching resource is sure to be a hit.
Character accordion brings happiness!
Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences Worksheet Pack
While I am not suggesting that worksheets are the best way to teach grammar, it’s often handy to have a few ‘filling in the blanks’ activities that help students to consolidate their understanding of grammar conventions. With that in mind, we have created a Simple, Compound, and Complex Sentences Worksheet Pack to help you to teach the concept of simple, compound, and complex sentences.
This worksheet pack includes:
- What is a Sentence? worksheet – students create meaningful sentences by matching the sentence beginnings with a sentence ending.
- Simple Sentences worksheet – students underline the subject and verb in simple sentences and complete a cloze activity.
- Compound Sentences worksheet – students choose which conjunction works best to join simple sentences.
- Complex Sentences worksheet – students choose which conjunction works best to join clauses together to make a complex sentence. Students also highlight the independent clause in complex sentences.
- Sorting Sentences – Students sort simple, compound, and complex sentences into their correct categories.
Build a Sentence Card Game
Are you looking for a grammar game? We have created an engaging card game that focuses on building simple sentences that include a subject, verb, and object.
This card game is played in a similar way to Rummy.
- Players take it in turns to pick up and put down cards until they can build a sentence that is grammatically correct and makes sense.
- The winner of the game is the first person to build three sentences or one ‘trump’ card sentence.
- The good news is, is that this grammar activity includes an instruction card and an answer card.
Paperclip Your Clauses and Conjunctions!
When it comes to learning about how to write compound sentences, sometimes a simple idea can be the thing that makes the penny drop!
I love this kinesthetic grammar activity as a hands-on way to learn about the function of conjunctions.
Try this effective paperclip conjunction activity
Grammar Activities for Middle Years and Upper
It’s time to eradicate boring grammar lessons and to include a variety of engaging and inspiring grammar activities.
Here are a few tips for teaching grammar:
- Create opportunities for your students to practice, practice, practice.
- Make speaking and listening and grammar BFFs (best friends forever). Make the explicit connection between the two and give your students the chance to apply their knowledge of grammar in the context of speaking.
- Make sure that you use real-world contexts. Look at the grammar on restaurant menus and billboards, in magazines, and in the newspaper. When your students can realize that grammar is used in the outside world, not just the classroom, they will understand how important it is.
- Play games.
Middle Years Grammar Worksheet Resource Pack
For those times when you just need a worksheet to strengthen understanding or maybe a quick formative assessment task, look no further than our Middle Years Grammar Worksheet Resource Pack.
For times when you need a worksheet to consolidate.
Name That Noun Grammar Game
Students will love playing our Name That Noun Grammar Game. Encourage your students to challenge each other and have fun while consolidating their knowledge of nouns.
This grammar activity is perfect for use during Writing Center Activities.
Flip It!
Give your students the opportunity to get competitive with our Adverb Grammar Card Game – Flip It! You’ll find different versions with a different grammar focus, perfect for literacy rotations.
- Similar to the dice game Yahtzee, students must try to fill in adverbs next to every clue on their score sheet.
- The player who has filled in the most words on their score sheet at the end of the game is the winner.
Do the grammar flip!
Create a Comparatively Amazing Classroom Display
Brighten up your classroom walls and stretch the minds of creative writers with our new Adjective Order of Comparison Resource Pack!
These bright, bold, and beautifully designed posters display the orders of comparison for adjectives. They are the perfect resource to use when broadening the students’ knowledge of adjectives and encouraging them to experiment with vocabulary.
Don’t miss out on these fantastic display posters!
Here are some more recommended teaching resources…
It’s time for me to hand it over to you, the expert. I hope that some of these grammar activities inspire you to mix it up a bit and to try something new.
Go on, get inspired, spread some grammar love in your classroom! Punctuate it all with these 26 fun ways to teach punctuation!
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