Teaching Grammar: The Fast and Simple Way

It’s time to talk about teaching grammar. It’s more than just communicating or writing clearly. Grammar is one of those subjects that is so important for students to understand. There is a direct correlation between grammar and reading comprehension. As your students’ written and oral language skills become more complex, their ability to understand what they are reading also increases if they have the right building blocks. Grammar instruction provides that structure.

The Problem

When I began teaching upper-elementary, there wasn’t enough time to teach grammar. However, when I saw my students’ writing, I knew I couldn’t skip over it. I was honestly shocked at the run-ons, incomplete sentences, lack of capitalization and punctuation, double negatives, etc. It was surprising how much help my students needed with grammar. I tried a lot of things to incorporate grammar in my classroom, but nothing ever worked out exactly how I wanted. Students would get bored listening to me teach certain skills, or materials were often too complex. In addition, I found myself using piece-meal materials for whatever skill they needed help with at the moment. I would scour sources online and spend hours prepping the materials so they were usable for students. It was honestly exhausting, and I felt like students weren’t engaged. It was frustrating, because I just needed something that was quick, simple, and drove home all the important stuff. So, I started creating my own grammar materials for students.

The Solution

Today I’m happy to share with you the much more polished version of those grammar materials, which have evolved into my Grammar Skill of the Week resource.

This resource goes even further in solving the problems I had teaching grammar. I designed this resource to help you teach a specific grammar skill in the most timely and effective way possible. Here’s what you’ll love about this resource:

1.) It’s time-saving: There is no prep involved. Each day is set up to take your students less than 15 minutes to complete.

2.) It’s self-guided: Notes and examples introduce each concept for students.

3.) It’s engaging: Students will practice the concepts with a variety of engaging questions, activities, games, riddles, and more.

4.) It helps connect the skill to students’ writing: Each week, students will respond to a writing prompt that helps them practice the skill in their writing.

5.) It creates a strong routine: Each week is set up the exact same way. When your students start a new skill, they’ll know exactly what to expect, how to get started, and be able to start working independently.

Organization

I know you all need something quick, simple, and consistent for teaching grammar, so I designed this resource to check all those boxes. Here’s how I’ve organized the week for you:

Day 1: Learn

Students rate their level of understanding before starting the skill.

• 4 = I can do this on my own, explain how to do it, and teach others.
• 3 = I can do it without help and show I understand
• 2 = I can do it with help or examples in front of me, but I may make mistakes
• 1 = I’m starting to get it but still confused
• 0 = Even with help, I don’t understand or can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong.

Each skill starts with a lesson and examples that are written in student-friendly language to demonstrate the grammar skill.

The learning day also has a few basic questions to reinforce the skill and keep students engaged. You can allow students to work on these independently or do them together as a class.

Day 2 and 3: Practice

On the second and third days, students will practice the skill with a variety of engaging questions, activities, games, riddles, and more.

Based on your students’ level of understanding, you could allow them to work independently or work through the questions/activity together as a class.

Day 4: Write

I’m most excited to share this part of the resource with you. When I was teaching grammar to my upper-elementary students, I found there was a disconnect with students’ work. Even when my students seemed to understand the skill, it wasn’t always translating into their writing. This resource will help bridge that gap. Students will respond to a writing prompt that will require them to transfer the skill they’ve learned and practiced.

The ultimate goal of grammar instruction is to get students to naturally incorporate the skill in their speech and writing. I designed these writing activities to give students the opportunity to practice doing that.

One thing to keep in mind is that it may be beneficial to work together as a class and demonstrate your expectations with an example piece of writing for the first few weeks after you introduce this resource. I included example writing pieces to help you check student work and to demonstrate your expectations for students.

Day 5: Assess

This resource also includes a final assessment piece so you can monitor students’ growth. The assessment has questions with varying degrees of difficulty so that you can get an accurate picture of student understanding. I also included answer keys for the assessments to help save time.

This resource really makes teaching grammar so simple. Go check out this resource HERE and see how easy it is to implement in your classroom.

Click HERE to try two weeks for free!