Grammar Escape Rooms

 I have been on a mission to make grammar a more exciting part of my curriculum. It's never been my favorite because there's not much creativity when it comes to grammar. You are either right or wrong. Most of Language Arts allows freedom. You can find many themes in a text. You can write stories that are full of imagination. Grammar, well, can be boring. In an attempt to keep boring out of my classroom, grammar escape rooms have been created. Students work together to solve 4 worksheets on a particular unit of study. There is always a theme and some horror to escape. In the noun escape room you must solve all of the challenges or risk losing toes to frostbite. In another escape room, aliens are out to destroy the planet and knowledge of the parts of speech is all that will save all of humankind! Maybe grammar isn't so boring after all. 

Verb Escape Room

Parts of Speech Escape Room

Noun Escape Room

Subject and Predicate Escape Room

Vocabulary Strategies

I am in the middle of completing an online course through Advancement Courses titles "Writing Well or Good Writing" that is full of great resources for teaching students grammar conventions. This link provides a list of vocabulary activities to help students understand commonly misused words. I can see these ideas working across curriculums to enforce content-specific vocabulary. The ideas also reach a variety of learners, too!

Professional Development with Advancement Courses

My summer plans include some PD! Advancement Courses offers online courses covering a variety of topics related to education. I'm taking a grammar focused course to try to revamp my grammar curriculum.

The courses can be taken for credit or for a certificate. There is a higher cost for college credit courses. So far there have been a number of great articles, videos, and participant discussion threads that are inspiring me to add more movement, music, and gaming to the language arts curriculum!

Teaching Compound and Complex Sentences - The SEL Way

My school has a focus on Social Emotional Learning and Mindfulness this year with teachers encouraged to practice mindful behaviors and introduce activities into their lesson. Inspired by GoNoodle, an app that models physical activity brain breaks to get kids moving to stimulate thinking, I created a very kinesthetic lesson.

During the last class, we studied compound sentences and coordinating conjunctions, so the lesson started with that review. Students were asked to write 1 simple sentence about Halloween on a sentence strip. After they wrote the sentence, they had to move around the room to find a buddy that had a sentence that was related to theirs. Then, they wrote the comma and coordinating conjunction on a notecard to make a compound sentence.

After that review, students were asked to add their coordinating conjunction to the coordinating conjunction wall and go to another area of the room to choose a subordinating conjunction that could take the place of the coordinating. I had a bunch of subordinating conjunctions taped on the wall for students to choose from.

We shared our new complex sentences and noted the differences between compound and complex sentences. Then students taped the conjunction to the simple sentence as we discussed the "weak" dependent clause and the "strong" independent clause. When a sentence starts with a weak dependent clause, it can't carry the independent clause behind it and needs the super-powered comma! Students them attached their new sentences to colorful paper and decorated and labeled them.

I had fill-in-the-blank notes written on the board for students to copy and complete using the class lesson and their newly created complex sentences to help them determine the definition and rules regarding complex sentences. All of our supplies were scattered throughout the room, so students had to continually move around throughout the lesson. The next class further studied complex students, and students had a great understanding of the conjunction and comma rules and even used our new grammar language throughout our review!

Our fill-in-the-blank class notes and model complex sentences. 

Partner created complex sentences to introduce the concept.