Grammar Activities
Magazine Grammar
- Pass out a variety of different magazines to small groups. Ask students to page through the magazines and use the pictures in them as inspiration for writing sentences using the grammar. This can be turned into a review game before a test by announcing a different grammar structure every three to four minutes and then counting up the number of sentences each team has (the winner being the team with the most correct sentences).
Tic Tac Toe Grammar
- Play Tic Tac Toe by placing nouns with irregular plurals in the boxes. Teams "get" the box (X or O) if they can say the plural of the noun (or use it in a sentence). This game can be adapted to almost any grammar point (for example, base verbs and students change to simple past, adjectives and students use them in a comparison, etc.). It is also an excellent game for reviewing/checking answers to homework: students bring their homework, and each box represents one of the homework exercise numbers. Teams get the X or O if the homework answer is correct. (And you do not need to have a homework assignment of just nine sentences. Just choose which ones you'll be checking in class before you play the game. Students do not need to know which sentences will be checked and thus cannot necessarily work ahead. For example, Student A calls for box 5. Box 5 represents #7 on the homework worksheet. If the student has the correct answer, his/her team gets that space, choosing X or O.)
Variation: You may just use the numbers (1-9) so that only you, the teacher, knows which words are where. This makes it much more exciting for the students.
Adverb and Adjective Taboo
Materials: several slips of paper with simple subject + verb sentences (The child laughed.)
This game is played similar to the popular game of "Taboo."
Divide class into four equal teams. One member chooses a slip of paper with the sentence written on it. He/she then gives up to 5 adjectives to describe the subject (ex. small, young, cute, fair-haired, or sweet to describe "child"). The team then tries to guess the subject. If they are correct, the team scores 1 point. The clue-giver then gives up to 5 adverbs to describe the verb (ex. happily, humorously, gleefully, sweetly, joyfully to describe "laughed"). If the team guesses correctly, they earn 3 points.
If the team misses either the subject or verb, the next team has an opportunity to "steal" the points by having one of their members give one clue.
The player is disqualified if he/she gives a noun instead of an adjective or a verb instead of an adverb or gives more than a one-word description.
This was a great way for my class to recognize the role of adverbs and adjectives in sentence construction.
Do/Make Concentration
Make cards with words and phrases that are used with either do or make. Turn all of the cards face down on a table. Each student takes turns flipping over 2 cards at a time, trying to make a "match" of the two words that are used with DO or two words that are used with MAKE. When all the cards have been matached, the student with the most matched wins!
What's the Question?
Level: Any Level
Type of Activity: listening and speaking, good for having students practice constructing questions with any grammar structure
Purpose: review question forms previously studied in class
Procedure:
Form two teams (three will work, but two seems to add just the right amount of competitive tension).
Explain the game, with a few examples of answers in search of questions. Ask, 'What's the question?', and get students to correctly say the corresponding questions for your answer.
Have two players--one from each team--come to the front. Style it like a game show if you like, with the students standing side-by-side. If you have access to bells or buzzers, it's even more fun.
Next, read an answer to a question and say, 'What's the question?' The fastest player to respond wins a point for her/his team. New contestants come to the front for a new round.
Rationale: This game forces the students to think backwards a little, so they must provide a grammatically perfect question. All too often, they are used to answering rather than asking questions, so this is challenging and useful as review.
Tense Game
This activity practices different tenses and forces students to create sentences on the spot. Divide the class into groups, assign each group a space on the whiteboard for them to write on. Say 2/3 words, for example,a tense, a subject, a gender, and/or an activity (simple past, the girls, to scream). Then say, ¨Go!¨ and one student from each group comes to the board and writes a sentence using the words that you just said. The student who finishes first with a correct sentence earns a point for their team. Every student should have a turn.
Sentence Formation
Before class write down sentences that relate to the grammar that is being taught at the time and cut up the sentences so that you have individual words. Have students work in pairs and give each pair a set of words (words from about 5 different sentences). The students work to form sentences using the cut up words. Tell the students how many sentences they must form and that every word must be used. The pair that finishes first with all the correct sentences is the winner!
Error Correction
To review grammar points, write incorrect senctences on slips of paper and post them around the classroom and the hallway. Have the students walk around to each sentence and in their notebook correct the sentences. To make it a little more fun you can turn it into a competition and the first student to finish correctly wins a piece of candy.
Ring-a-Word
Grammar game that can be used for anything from learning the alphabet to revising irregular verbs. Cover the whiteboard randomly with words or letters. For example, if you are teaching questions, you might cover the board with all different types of questions, including incorrect questions. Divide the class into two teams. One team is given a marker and the other team is given a marker in a different color. The teams line up on either side of the board with the front students holding the markers. The teacher calls out a letter and the front students try to locate it and draw a ring round it first. The team with the most number of rings at the end wins.
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Have some fun activities/ideas? How about worksheets, review sheets or songs?
Send your ideas to malloryforseth@gmail.com. Please include a short summary of the activity along with any worksheets or extra materials needed for the activity.
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