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

Parts of Speech Escape Game

I'm so excited to try out my new Teachers Pay Teachers purchase, Cracking the Classroom Code: Lost in the Ocean. It is a parts of speech escape style game that includes all the printables and directions needed for a fun review activity. Teresa Kwant has a number of escape games posted on her TPT page, too! Even if you aren't looking for a parts of speech review, she has games for a variety of concepts across subject areas. I highly recommend checking them out!

Coding and Grammar? Yes!

The Hour of Code is always a huge success in my classroom, and I spend the rest of the year trying to find meaningful ways to add coding skills to the curriculum. Since the Hour of Code stresses that activities can be online or offline, I created an offline coding activity to give my students a break from their screens while also using the critical thinking skills required for coding.

The result is the Noun and Adjective Hidden Image. Students use a 10 x 10 grid to create an image or pattern. There is a key at the bottom of the page that specifies the colors needed for the studied parts of speech. They then "write the code" by writing a list of 100 words that correspond to their image.

We typically start with a pre-made list that students use to color in the hidden image before they make their own so that they can understand the process. They get very creative with their images as they are practicing identifying parts of speech while also using those 21st Century Skills.

The "coded" image. 

The word list -- the code!