How to Teach Grammar in Primary School
Children can express themselves through drawing, scribbling and writing. While younger students may feel unhindered in sharing their stories, third graders may feel the need to simply "correct" their mistakes rather than expand their creativity through revision. One way to help primary students learn grammar is through their own words where each word plays a role in expressing a complete thought--a simple sentence.
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Instructions
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What Every Sentence Needs
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Ask students to write the name of a person, place, thing or idea on an index card with a particular colored marker. For example, write the subject "cat" in blue.
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List words that show action. With a different color marker, students will write an action word (or verb) on another index card that can make sense with their subject.
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Express a complete sentence by using two-word noun verb sequences such as "cats run." Students can trade "noun" cards to see if the noun makes sense with the verb and vice versa. After that, return the nouns and verbs to the original student.
Building stronger sentences
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Next, introduce adjectives which describe nouns. Ask students to write their adjectives in a third color. Also, introduce the articles a, an and the, which can be written with the same color as adjectives.
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Next students describe the action verb with adverbs, which describe verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. Help students choose adverbs that describe the verb, such as "play quietly."
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If a student wants to describe a noun or verb with two or more words, a conjunction, such as "and" must be used. Other conjunctions, or joining words, include: but, or and so.
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Prepositional phrases begin with prepositions, or place words, and end with nouns or pronouns (replacement words for nouns). For example in the phrase " under the table," under is a place word. A list of prepostions can be found at Keep and Share's website.
Giving the Details
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Show students to always capitalize the first letter of the first word in a sentence. Other words needing capitalization include proper nouns, which are specific names of people, places and things.
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Other types of words include pronouns, which take the place of nouns. They include subject pronouns such as I, you, he, she or it as well as words that show belonging, such as my, your, his or her.
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Each sentence ends with a period, question mark, or exclamation point. A statement or command usually ends with a period. A question ends with a question mark and a highly emphatic sentence ends with an exclamation point.
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Help students conclude this activity by stringing the final sentences together by having students punch a hole at each end of the index cards and pulling yarn through the holes until each word is on the string. Students can now display an original complete sentence.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Young child learning to write her name image by levo from Fotolia.com
