Grammar

I've found grammar to be a tricky subject to teach in my class. There are so many rules in the English language that are constantly broken, it's no wonder grammar is something so many people struggle with when writing. Luckily, I found an amazing interactive grammar notebook that I decided to add to my lesson plans for the year. I've become a little "Interactive Notebook" happy lately, but honestly, the students love it and I think they learn so much more this way.

For grammar this week, I decided to do a bit of a review in a collaborative way. I have four table groups, so I decided to have each group create a poster for a topic of grammar. I had each table choose from the topics of Capitalization, Commas, Plural Nouns, and Apostrophes. Their directions were to, as a table group, create a poster for the rules of their grammar concept, and then present it to the class. 

 Everyone set to work right away, and I heard some wonderful ideas being shared at each table. From almost every group I noticed a lot of wonderful collaboration, which I think is really challenging considering the age differences in my class. It would have been very easy for all the sixth graders to take control of their groups, but it looked like everyone was contributing equally. I even saw some fourth grade students take on leadership roles, which I really wasn't expecting. Overall, it was a great way to review some of our grammar and now we have some pretty awesome student created posters!

I really liked this poster.
The cloud has the rules for using an apostrophe,
and the raindrops have the examples!

I loved how color coordinated this one was.
The rules are colored on the top left,
and the examples are in the same color
on the bottom right!

This group decided to use bullet points for their
rules and examples. 

I really loved listening to this group work. When they
were discussing their poster organization,
they decided to use polygons for the rules.

Our trimester ended on Friday and we are now on Fall Break! That means one week of catching up on my grading and getting Report Cards done!