Multigenre Project May 9, 2017

Volume 1, Issue 1

What makes grammar

fun?
GRAMMER GAMES
A teacher will never get a perfect world of students who all are have the same interest levels, same
grades, same academic strengths and weaknesses, same behaviors, and some academic knowledge. It
would be boring for a teacher to have that perfect world; it doesnt exist. Every students brings their
own talents to the classroom and their own weaknesses where the teacher must take on the oppor-
tunity to teach them. There is no way around for a teacher to teach all of the four core subjects that
align with state standards and the curriculum. Part of the language arts curriculum involves reading
and writing. Like any subject can be either uninteresting or disengaging for a student.

Lets talk about writing. I think writing is fun, interesting, and enjoyable. But again, we dont live in a
perfect world and not every child finds that word appeasing. And some teachers dont enjoy the idea
of teaching writing. There has to be solutions to make writing more engaging for students and teach-
ers. The approach to teaching writing needs to come off as fun and exciting. Traditional teaching isnt
the best avenue for students of these generations because our society has advanced in many ways like
technology. Children dont respond to the previous ways of teaching like they did in the past.

The new approach to teaching instruction especially writing will be to open a statement to students
like today we will be exercising our writing skills or lets play a game to introduce a writing les-
son. The topic of grammar involved in writing has an overwhelmed amount of components that
students must learn to become fluent writers.

In this newsletter you will get entitized with forms of how to teach grammar to students that moti-
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
vates them to write and continue to practice on improving. These are called Grammar Games. There
are all types and forms that reach out to all types of learners on different levels. Also they engage Learning Styles ........................2
students in different point of views depending on how actively interactive students participate. It
helps take the pressure off of the formal instructions and constant handouts that put students to Types of Games ........................2
work with pencil and paper. They get to be involved with the classmates by learning from them be- Tell a Story ...............................3
sides the teacher. The overall goal is to get them to actually remember what they learned because the
Sentence Expansions ...............3
students will hopefully be having fun while learning educational value information.
Call Out The Word ...................4
Act It Out .................................4
MULTIGENRE PROJECT Writing Sentences in Color......5
The ideas and information found in this newsletter is complied by scholarly articles found through
online academic journals to prove a point. The Multigenre project was a research-based project de-
signed to have me search for information that discussed my proposed question related to teaching SPECIAL POINTS OF
writing to young children. INTEREST

The main focus of the articles I selected to write throughout this newsletter are based on Grammar Drill Tasks
Games related to writing. These clever games describe writing in a different light to make it fun,
inviting to students, and create a positive interaction between the entire classroom.
Preposition Song

So what are you wait for? Flip through the rest of the pages and find games that will work in your Weebly site
classroom to teach elements of grammar to your students. The games mentioned are only a high-
Scholarly Academic Articles
lights of many that are out there. But I found out that these games for teaching grammar can be
modified or adjusted to any element of writing to best fit your class or needs of teaching something in
a new unique way that will match better with you students to learn.
 GRAMMAR GAMES SUPPORT LEARNING
STYLES
Learning styles is a broad spectrum of
ways students learn. The primary ones are
kinesthetic, auditory, and visual learners.
There are many other types that also allow
students to learn best. When I did my
research for this project I considered all of
the different ways students learn.
Throughout the newspaper issue each of
the games individually match with a
stronger learning style over another. The
types of activities I brought up involve
music, theater, colorful visuals, and stu-
dents moving around the room.
Teachers can take into account the types
of learners in their classroom to pick out
the grammar games that would fit best
with his or her class. Although it is not
guaranteed that every grammar game will
be successful in the classroom. Other fac-
tors include students interest and atten-
tion span level. A teacher does recognize
this. In the end, each of these grammar
games offer a variety of idea that can also
be modified or changed to best fit your
individual class of students.

Creativity and novelty can make grammar lessons more fun. ~Teresa
Roberts

DRILL TASK:

SENTENCE
WHAT TYPE OF GAMES ARE THERE?
TRANSFORMATIONS
Need a quick drill to get students to change When it come to teaching in general the traditional methods involve note-taking, lecture
their sentences with higher-level meaning? presentations, and handouts of worksheets. As a future teacher of young children, the
Here is an idea to use called Sentence performance of teachers is crucial.
Transformations. This task writing for
students gets them to solve greater mean- There are many type of games out there that get students to move around, talk and re-
ings in their writing. In this exercise, the
student is to focus on how to improve a
spond, sing, navigate with visuals and much more. Games found in here help students be
writing piece, the language, and the style to interactive by participating in their learning actively and shape new point of views that
express a better understanding of an idea. allow them to learn information in a way that could be more clear to them.
To breakdown a writing piece the student
has to focus on one portion and reframe it Overall, finding what interest your students and accommodates their learning style and
to make it clearer to the reader that com-
strengths will help them want to put forth more effort towards their weaknesses in gram-
pletes a thought and verbalizes the writers
voice in writing. Example below mar to learn how to improve their writing. In the final outcome, the hope will be for their
writing to improve and become more literate people.
Unclear: Probably, no part of writing
elegant, effective, and rigorously academ-
ic essays--even for advanced writers--
seems more daunting than coming up with
effective beginnings and endings.

vs.

Much clearer: Probably for every writer,

no part of writing essays seems more
daunting than coming up with effective
beginnings and endings.

vs.

Clearest: Probably for every type of

writing, nothing seems more daunting
than coming up with effective beginnings
and endings (Dkhissi 249).

2
 DRILL TASK:

SENTENCE

EXPANSIONS

Need help with teaching your stu-

dents to expand their sentences?
Heres a tip by using this drill task
called Sentence Expansions. This
allows students to recognize lan-
guage and how it operates. The way
to approach the idea is to starts
from phrases to clauses to sentenc-
es. Ask a student to take a basic
sentence and expand on it once.
Then expand on it once more, and
combine two sentences together to
create more than one thought. Next
the student can extend more and
lastly connect ideas by making clear
elaborations and substitutions. This
uses the processes of editing and
revision. In the end, students will
begin to see their sentences grow
from simple ideas to compound and
complex sentences. Example below.

1. Take a basic sentence:

We tend to use technologies.

GAME TO TELL A STORY 2. Expand on it:

We tend to use new technologies.

Children love hearing stories and telling stories. A way to capture students attention
through a story is let them come up one at a time and create part of the story. This gram- 3. Expand again with additional
mar game called And then I saw to practice conjunctions. The teacher starts with a sen- information:
tence like This morning I forgot my lunch. Then the teacher facilitates each student to go We tend to use technologies that
around the room and add a conjunction like therefore, but, and, as, etc. An example are not harmful.
would be But my mom brought my lunch to the office. This activity will get students to
4. Combine two sentences:
tell a story that builds language off each other. Teachers can use any starting sentence
about any topic and students get to add things to the story that that interest them. The We tend to use new technologies.
last student left will get to end the story. This games can b e used to practice any grammar Our use should be wise.
component. It was initially made to exercise the skill of conjunctions but teachers can We tend to use new technologies,
modify this game to get students to practice other parts of speech to practice grammar. but our use should be wise.

5. Extend more:

We tend to use new technologies,

but our use should be wise other-
wise they might be harmful.

6. Make substitutions to elaborate

or link ideas:

We tend to use new BUT NOT

HARMFUL technologies, SO our
use should be wise (Dkhissi 248).

3
CELEBRATE PREPOSI-
TION SONG CALL OUT THE WORD
(sung to tune of Celebration

by Kool and the Gang)
By, of, with, in, to, from, on!
By, of, with, in, to, from, on!
Parts of speech you should nev-
er
have to fear,
Lets make it easy, and kick it
into gear.
Just fetch an at, and a for done on verbs and adverbs and other
and through,
So we can celebrate preposi-
tions
with you.
Noun Tennis begins with one student
standing in the front of the room and one
in the back. The first student in the front
will call out a noun like for example
building (Brown 55). Then the second
student in the back will call out a pronoun
like Empire State Building (Brown 55).
This will go back and forth until it takes a
student more than 2 seconds to respond.
Then a new student will take their place
when the previous student took longer
than 2 seconds to respond. This can be
called on randomly. It helps promote criti-
grammar elements too. Also, the time
limit can be modified but the point is for it
to be no longer than a few seconds to chal-
lenge students to think of words on the
spot to make a grammar connection.
The Ministers cat starts with the teacher
calling out with the phrase The ministers
cat is an angry cat (Brown 55). Then a
student will pick up the sentence and re-
place the letter a adjective with an adjec-
tive starting with a letter b. Next that stu-
dent will choose someone randomly to do
the next letter of the alphabet until they
get to the end of the alphabet. This can be
changed to other grammar elements too.
But the goal is for students to be unpre-
pared of who is next since people are

Lets go now...By, of, with, in,

to, from, on!

By, of, with, in, to, from, on!

Above, beyond, between

Under, over, since, beneath

Against, near, toward, around LET STUDENTS BREAK IT DOWN

the worldfrom, on.

By, of, with, in, to, from, on!
By, of, with, in, to, from, on!
The game called Kids take action starts with by the teacher using this activity as
a confidence builder for students. They will be asked to list verbs based on
things they like to do. This can help start or close a grammar lesson. Mainly its
a brainstorming activity to get students thinking about a topic to begin teaching
a lesson or to review what students learned after a lesson was taught. They will
give you prior knowledge in a new form that doesnt just have you asking ques-
tions on what they know. Instead they will be actively showing what they al-
ready know through a playful learning experience. This game can be used for
other grammar elements like prepositions, nouns, adjectives, etc.

ACT IT OUT
Another game to involve elements of theater is called Whats my adverb?. This
game will start by the teacher giving each student a verb that can be acted out.
Then students will take turns acting out their verb but when others guess they
have to use the language of only an adverb as their answer until they get it cor-
rect. Examples are like slowly, softly, quietly, loudly, quickly, etc. This is a form
of charades but with a education spin on it. The teacher can choose if the stu-
dent who is acting out a verb can make sounds or not. If this is a non-verbal
acting out activity it will make it more challenging for students who are guess-
ing. It ultimately depends on how the teacher would like to direct the play.

4
Once youve introduced these activities that
play with parts of speech, your students will
clamor for a grammar lesson. ~Kim
Brown
WRITING SENTENCES IN COLOR
An activity to break down sentences
into word groups is called Sematic
Chunks. These will be prepared on
notecards in order of red, green, red,
and blue. The first red is for a sub-
ject and the second red is for object.
Green is for verbs and blue is for
adverbs. When each sentence is put
in order the student will be able to
see the same of order where the sen-
tence starts with a subject, then a
verb, then an object, and end with
adverbs. Sentence structures are
then seen in a new visual way
through colored cards. Students who
need that visual representation will
gain this from the activity.
A lower leveled activity from sematic
chunks is called Three Colours
which only uses the three colors of
red, blue, and green. For each color,
it will either represent a subject,
verb, and process to analyze how
sentences create a subject-verb
agreement statements. Student will
write their phrases on each of the
colored strips and put them togeth-
er. They can see patterns when a
subject comes first or ends the sen-
tence by manipulating the strips
with their hands to create sentences.
Overall it will teach how sentences
can be structured in different ways
to complete a thought. And this al-
lows students to use materials in-
stead of just writing sentences tradi-
tionally on paper. Therefore it is
more interactive meaning students
will be more actively engaged into
their learning.
5
 The reason I selected to compile a newsletter was to give
many ideas seen throughout each of the articles to display
how teachers can teach grammar in a fun and engaging
ways for all types of students. Each of these articles are
based on opinions, perspectives, experiences, and research
-based proven information that are effective to implement
in classrooms of young children. Writing is seen through a
positive and unique perspective to approach students
engagement towards writing. The goal in the end is for
teachers to take away activities they find applicable for
their students and enjoy new learning experiences
together with their students in grammar lessons for
writing.

Multigenre Project
www.sydneymsanchez.weebly.com

Phone: 1-800-GRAMMAR
Fax: 1-101-GRAMMAR
E-mail: sydney@grammar.com

REFERENCES

Brown, K. (2004). Grammar Games. Teaching Pre K-8, 35(1), 55.

Curnow, A. (2013). Practical strategies for teaching grammar. Literacy Learning: The
Middle Years, 21(3), 84-xii.

Dkhissi, Y. (2013). An Integrative Model of Grammar Teaching: from Academic to Com-

municative Needs. Arab World English Journal, 4(1), 239-256.

Herbert, B. b. (2012). Grammar Games: A practical guide to teaching grammar in context.

Practically Primary, 17(1), 21-24.

Roberts, T. (2013). Grammar in the key of fun. AMLE Magazine, 1(4), 31-33.